Some Kind of Mojo
by Aisho9
Summary: There's something shady going on in Long Island - more than just disappearing gold, that is. The Winchesters find themselves on the trail of something big. The boys and their trusty sidekick Jordan go on the hunt. Sequel to "My Boys"
1. Bowties Are Cool

Jordan Delaine is back!

I honestly wasn't sure if I'd come back to her again, but out of the blue she popped into my head. I had a crazy scene playing out, where Sam's being convicted of the myriad of things the boys would be convicted for, and she just waltzes into the hearing ... and here I am. If you have no idea who Jordan Delaine is, she's the most recent edition to the Winchester crew. She first appeared in my fanfiction "Her Boys" as the runaway mall slave who discovers a talent for hunting.

Anyway - Enjoy!

* * *

Judge Eugene Hale was having a good day. His wife had actually deigned to make him coffee today, which meant that whole anniversary thing was forgiven and forgotten—and suggested maybe he'd be having a good night tonight as well. The trial he was currently presiding over was nothing special, open-and-shut in the truest sense, and one that would look good in the papers to boot. The defendant's name was Sam Winchester; he'd done some unmentionable things to a grave, things that the judge would just as soon have never known about. Revolting. Usually cases like these took an agonizingly long time to wade through, but there was such a quantity of evidence against the defendant, the judge really couldn't foresee any problems whatsoever. Add the bottom-of-the-barrel court-appointed sleaze Sam Winchester had defending him, and it looked it looked as if Judge Eugene Hale might just be going home early today, to have his dinner with his wife and two children, both of whom were rotten to the core and probably just this minute planning how they'd ruin his (so far) excellent day. With the prospect of an early day, a good meal, and-although this might be too much to hope for-quiet children, Judge Eugene Hale relaxed back in his extra-padded chair, tapped his fingers absently against the mahogany wood before him, and let his mind wander.

No one else in the courtroom seemed very attentive to the proceedings either, although the prosecutor was making a token effort; a case like Winchester's, of course, could very well be just what he needed to make his career. But the heat of the summer day was leaking in from outside, making everyone lethargic and giving the world a steamed quality, and somewhere nearby there was a fly buzzing. In the jury box, one man had actually fallen asleep.

Amidst the prosecutor's drone, the fly's incessant whining, and the soft snores of the grey-haired man on the jury, there came a sound. It came from out in the hall—at first Judge Eugene Hale thought he was imagining it—it grew gradually, steadily louder, and as most women the judge knew wore sneakers, it took him a moment to recognize the sound as heels clicking against the stone floor of the courthouse.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, the doors flew wide, banging into the walls and knocking aside the first guard, who crumpled straight to the ground. The man on the jury awoke with a snort and the prosecutor, who had been trying to work up something resembling enthusiasm, stopped midsentence. They all stared collectively to the back of the courtroom.

She strode forward, hips swinging, stride confident. The judge felt as if he were being mesmerized. He couldn't tear his eyes away. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the second guard was having similar troubles.

The woman moved quickly and fluidly up the middle aisle, a long swath of hair tumbling down her back in waves. It swung with every step she took. What was she doing here? What could she want? As she drew up to his desk, however, he looked at the defendant and saw relief in the other man's face—and that was when Judge Eugene Hale finally registered the very large, very scary, very deadly rifle the woman was carrying in her hands.

"Hey, boys," she said, her voice a throaty purr as she glanced from the judge to the guard and back again. "This here's a stick up." And then she laughed, as if this were a joke, throwing back her head and exposing a long neck—

"Put down your weapon!" the guard shouted, wrenching the judge to his senses. The guard was reaching for his own weapon. "Do it now!"

As the handgun came up, the assault rifle swept over, and a loud _pop_ echoed through the courtroom. A few people screamed. But instead of a hole in the guard's chest, there was a fuzzy little—but no. Couldn't be. The judge squinted. It _was_. She'd shot the guard with a horse tranquilizer! What sort of criminal was she, anyway?

She bent swiftly—the judge had to close his eyes—to fetch the keys from the guard's belt, and then tossed them neatly to Sam Winchester. "Hey, baby," she said, as she threw them. He caught them without appearing to have moved at all, and the judge saw on his face an answering smile, just as wicked as hers. The judge would smile too, if he had a woman like that, willing to break him out of prison in the middle of a court proceeding—where, by the way, there were security cameras aplenty.

Sam Winchester's lawyer seemed to be temporarily paralyzed with horror, but the same couldn't be said for the prosecutor. The man's face was almost purple with rage. Fingers hooked into claws, he went for the girl at a run, and that was when Sam Winchester struck.

The attack was so sudden, so _violent_, that at first the judge couldn't comprehend that it had happened at all. One moment, the lawyer was standing there, about to smack the living daylights out of that girl, and the next he was flat on his back, and didn't look as if he'd ever get up again. She hefted her rifle and grinned.

"Good to have you back, babe," she said. "C'mon. The car's waiting."

They waved at the jury, whose mouths were without exception hanging full open, and walked together arm-in-arm out of the courtroom. No one tried to stop them.

He wondered how they'd get past the guards out front but, upon reflection, decided they'd probably already met a fate similar to that of the guards in the courtroom. He watched them go—the doors swung shut—and it occurred to Judge Eugene Hale that he was having a very, very bad day indeed.

* * *

Jordan Delaine jumped into the backseat of the Impala so that Sam could sit up with Dean, who was grinning at his brother with a twinkly look in his eyes. She figured Dean would want a moment. Nothing girlie, you know—Dean punched Sam in a shoulder. "Long time no see, brutha," he said, just as Jordan had guessed he would, and Sam grinned back at him.

"I was starting to think you weren't coming for me," Sam said, as Dean hit the gas and roared out of the parking lot.

" 'Course we're coming for you," Jordan told him. "We're always coming for you. We just had—some hiccups."

"Like the-prosecutor-had-mojo hiccups," agreed Dean.

Sam's eyebrows jumps. "Explains why he was so pissed. What kind of mojo?"

"South American mojo," said Jordan.

"Guy likes to party in Rio." Dean mimicked downing some shots and chuckled to himself. He seemed to recall something, and asked seriously, "How'd the job go, though? Did you finish it?"

"Well," said Sam.

* * *

The setting: Long Island, hotel ballroom, evening gowns and penguin suits mandatory.

The time: Some three months previous.

The characters: various schmucks, schmoozers, and tightwads. A slick SOB who (with 95% certainty) was an African-trained shaman magicking away people's valuables. Oh, and of course, a waiter with a gun, and a couple just recently engaged looking to party.

The engaged part was a cover, of course. As far as Jordan knew, she had not received any actual proposals of marriage, although her stomach had certainly turned cartwheels when she'd put on the faux engagement ring. She looked at with eyes only a little bit crossed while Dean fidgeted with his collar and complained.

"Why do _I_ have to be the waiter?" he demanded of Sam, who was trying patiently to straighten Dean's bowtie.

"Because the invitation we nicked is for one James Callahan and his plus one, who was registered as Regina Marcelli." Sam gave the bowtie a sharp tug. "And you do _not_ get to parade Jory around."

Dean blew air through his lips noisily, but he was smiling good-naturedly. "Yeah, yeah, don't get your panties in a bind. Next time mug a guy a little more robust, okay? Dude had a dweeb neck. I can't even breathe."

"Quit complaining, you pansy," Jordan said, straightening up. She reached up and fiddled with his collar, tugging it this way and that, and then with a neat movement, undid the little button just under the collar. She brought the bowtie around to hide it and tucked the collar in so that it didn't look unbuttoned. "There. So long as you don't start yanking on your bowtie—which is hot, by the way, you should wear them more often—"

"Shut up," said Dean.

"—you'll be fine. You can breathe, right?"

"Yeah, thanks," he said grumpily, and ambled off to check his gun one more time. Jordan turned to look up at Sam, who sucked in his gut, puffed out his chest, and raised his eyebrows in what he probably thought was an austere expression.

"So?" he asked. "Do I pass inspection?"

She ran her eyes down the length of him, then back up again, and was pleased to see a hint of pink showing on his cheeks. "I guess you'll do," she said. "I mean, you're no James Bond—"

He took an aggressive step forward, giving the end of her hair a gentle tug. "Yeah?" he murmured, and it was her turn to flush. "You'll have to be hot enough for the both of us, then."

"Whoa, cool your jets," said Dean from the bathroom, where he'd arrayed his solvents and brushes and cloths all across the counter. Jordan hadn't let him do it on the bed. ("We have to sleep on those sheets, you know.") "I'm still in the room, Mr. Love Machine."

Sam grinned unrepentantly and dropped a kiss on Jordan's lips, just to show Dean who was boss. Jordan rolled her eyes at him, which had zero effect whatsoever, as her face had gone scarlet. Sam glanced down at his watch. "Time to go, kids."


	2. Dead Doornails and Such

Chapter Two! I must say, whatever had to happen in terms of plot, I went a little nuts in the whole clothing department. I mean, Dean's get-up was a pleasure in and of itself, but I spent about an hour trying to decide what Jordan would wear. ;) Let me know what you think! (About the chapter, not her dress ... lol)

* * *

They dropped Dean off at the side entrance. He glowered them as they drove away, not that Jordan could blame him; they were driving his car instead of Jordan's GTO, first of all, as Dean had drawn the short straw when they'd started this gig, and then there was that whole Dean-in-a-uniform thing. The fact that it wasn't even the sexy kind of uniform no doubt ate at his pride a bit.

Or a lot, she amended silently, watching him kick a bottle in the rearview mirror. The waiter get-up really was too tight for him, but a guy built like Dean, it didn't matter if it'd been painted on. She gave him a thumbs-up out the window before they turned the corner. He flipped her the bird.

"Ready for this?" Sam asked, paying this exchange no mind.

"Which part?" Jordan returned, lifting up her hand to gaze at the diamond. It was a damned good fake, and although the thought should have never crossed her mind (shame on her!) she thought it looked good on her finger. She looked over at Sam and caught him giving the diamond a pensive look. She dropped her hand back to her lap.

They drove up to the valet, who took the keys cheerfully, a smile pasted on his face. "Dent this car," Jordan threatened, "and I dent your head. You got that?" The valet's smile vanished.

"A bit overzealous there," muttered Sam, walking arm-in-arm with her towards hotel's entrance.

"You think so now," said Jordan, "but talk to me again if Dean finds out who messed with his baby's paintjob."

Sam pursed his lips. "Good point."

The doormen nodded to them as they passed, seeing nothing amiss in the handsome young couple walking past them, but the handsome young couple noticed something amiss with the doormen. They were both carrying concealed weapons, and one of them had an Army tattoo just peeking above his collar.

"Security," murmured Jordan, impressed. "There'll be more heavy-hitters here than we thought."

"Bigger payday for our boy," said Sam.

They coasted on into the main hall, where they turned in their invitation, accepted the party favor (gift certificates to the most expensive spas, a two-day pass to an elite golf club, and—Jordan's favorite—a bar of chocolate infused with twenty-four carat gold) and were escorted into the ballroom.

Jordan was immediately glad she'd convinced Sam to blow every cent they had on wardrobe. The people here were gorgeous, but their clothes were transcendent; a woman whirled past in a Versace gown that Jordan _knew_ wasn't supposed to be out until next year. Audrey had sent her a letter ten pages long after a particularly informative night with the manager at the Gucci store, who apparently was on the up-and-up with New York. Jordan had thought he'd been jerking Audrey around until the moment she'd laid eyes on the gown.

_Audrey's going to flip!_ Jordan thought blissfully.

"You look happy," said Sam, glancing down at her face, which was all but glowing.

"Audrey would kill to be here," Jordan replied. Audrey would kill to be wearing Jordan's dress, actually, let alone go to the party—Jordan was wearing Dior, an actual Dior evening gown, the likes of which she had never hoped to touch, let alone wear. Until she met the Winchester boys, that is.

They'd spent all their money on Sam. The dress, on the other hand, they stole.

It was a creamy white, which wasn't usually her style—Jordan liked bold colors and black—but the fabric was so beautiful, and fell so sleekly, that it hardly mattered. The neckline was ornamented in a style that was almost Egyptian, and that was why Jordan's eyes were lined with kohl, her lips painted red, and her hair ironed straight.

Her shoes were from Macy's. She hoped no one would notice.

"Mm, love your dress," a woman's voice said, and Jordan turned to look. The woman was wearing a black dress, one whose shape Jordan recognized. "Dior, right?"

"Forget mine, I love _yours_," Jordan gasped. "Yohji Yamamoto, right? Omigawd. I love him. _Love_, love, love."

The woman gave a gentle laugh. "That's refreshing. I've had ten people ask me what on earth I was doing in it."

Jordan made a scandalized sound.

"I know, I know," the woman agreed. "They're just so in love with their Chanel. Not that I have anything against Chanel."

"Of course," said Jordan, smiling, and the woman extended a hand.

"Melanie Fisher," the woman said, flashing stark white teeth.

"Regina Marcelli," Jordan answered promptly, shaking Melanie's hand. She gave Sam's arm a gentle squeeze. "This is my fiancé, James Callahan."

"Nicely done," Melanie said to Jordan, impressed, as she shook Sam's hand too. "He's a looker. You're an Armani fan, are you, James?"

Sam's lips tipped into a rueful smile. "This is all Reggie, I'm afraid. I'm useless at clothes."

"It's true, he is," said Jordan, although this wasn't perfectly true; maybe his staples were blue jean and plaid, but they looked damned good on him.

"So's my man," Melanie whispered to Jordan, blue eyes glittering. "Doesn't stop me from dressing him up, either." She leaned back a little. "It was nice talking to you, Reggie."

"You too," said Jordan, and watched Melanie sashay off.

"You certainly speak the lingo," said Sam, once Melanie was out of earshot. "Who in God's name is Yohji Yamamoto?"

"A designer," said Jordan. "I love him almost as much as I love my blue sneakers."

Jordan's baby blue sneakers had been replaced five times since their initial purchase. Mud, gore, blood, acid, gasoline, something green and gooey that smelled like goat cheese—you name it, those sneakers had walked in it. Jordan loved them the way Dean loved his nickel-plated Colt 1911. There was more than one monster with a face imprinted with the sole of Jordan's baby blue sneakers.

They moved towards the back, where their table was, and as they moved Sam commented, "You know, times like these, I'm reminded what a girlie-girl you are."

"Oh, _God_," said Jordan with a sigh. "What are we, six? A girl can be tough and still wear a dress, Sam."

"James. And wearing a dress isn't the same as sighing over the designer label." He caught sight of the look on her face and said hastily, "Not that it's a bad thing, I'm just saying."

"Stop while you're ahead, pal," she said, none too kindly. They found their seats, pretended to loiter for a moment, and then turned round and went straight for the bar. The dance floor was packed, and it was a good bet that their boy was lurking in there somewhere, but they'd spot him best from the bar, so they both ordered champagne and watched the people dance.

"See him yet?" Sam asked, eyes moving back and forth across the room.

Jordan's eyes were round. "_Dean_." Moving steadily through the crowd, a silver platter in one hand, was Dean—stormy-faced, stiff, and vaguely homicidal. Sam snorted into his champagne, turning away as he did so, that Dean might not see his grin. It didn't matter; Dean had spotted him anyhow, and was coming their way with murderous eyes.

"Shh!" Jordan said to Sam, slapping his arm futilely. "You'll blow the whole thing!"

"Anything I can get you, sir?" Dean demanded, coming up to them. His tone suggested they were close to death. "Ma'am?"

"Oh, that's low," Jordan said, stung. "I think I warrant at least a 'miss'."

Dean's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" Sam asked Dean pointedly, earning a sour look. Dean nodded towards the door.

"I think we got him," he said. "It's the same guy who was at the last party we crashed. Something tells me the chances of the same guy being at two exclusive parties a hundred miles apart as somewhat slim."

"Not as slim as you think," said Jordan. "These people get around."

"Yeah, well, I saw him slipping a bit of African mojo into a woman's purse ten minutes ago."

"That'd do it," said Sam.

Dean gave him a glowering look. "You think?"

Sam made shooing motions—Dean flushed angrily—and Dean moved away, toting his platter of hors d'oeuvres. Sam and Jordan began watching the door, keeping their eyes peeled for their gold thief. He was damned elusive; the only way they'd been able to track him was through party invitations, and even then it was hit-and-miss. Half they arrived in time only to question the people who'd been robbed. The first time they'd caught up with him, he'd slipped away—none of them were prepared to let that happen again.

Jordan's worst fear was that he'd bleed on her dress. Blood would _never_ come out of this fabric.

"C'mon," Jordan heard Sam whisper, his fingers tapping restlessly against his champagne glass.

But he didn't show. They stood at the bar, waiting, for at least fifteen minutes before they realized he wasn't _going_ to show. "Something's wrong," Sam said, and they were just moving towards the doors when someone screamed.

Sam and Jordan bolted in the direction of the scream, with Dean hot on their heels. "What'd you do with your hors d'oeuvres?" Jordan asked him, when he drew up with them.

"Some old broad's wearing it," he answered, grinning, and was still grinning when they came face-to-face with their gold thief.

He was pinned spread-eagle on the wall, clothing ripped apart to reveal a body that looked as if it'd been put through a human-sized shredder. Blood poured down the wall in fresh rivulets. The woman who'd screamed was wilting to one side, supported by her white-faced husband, and all around people were drawing close. Low, shocked murmurs spread through the ranks. Even the gold thief's expression was gruesome, twisted with agony and fear.

"Holy smokes," said Dean, drawing a hand over his mouth.

"You can say that again," Jordan muttered.

Quietly, so as not to attract attention, they turned and slipped out the back. Dean ripped off his bowtie and shrugged out of his vest as they walked, until he was stripped down to the black slacks and white pressed shirt.

"We have a problem," said Sam, loosening his own collar. "A _big_ problem."

"Because someone got to him first?" Jordan wanted to know.

"No," said Dean. "Because trust me, nothing human killed that guy."

Sam added helpfully, "There's always a bigger fish."

And she got it. Mr. Goldmonger was already a pretty big kahuna. Whatever killed him, then, was the supernatural equivalent to Godzilla. Or, you know, something equally large and world-squashing. "Oh, shit," she said.

Dean leveled a finger in her direction. "Bingo."


	3. Tally Ho Cicero

Note: You'll understand this once you've read it through, but I chose Cicero rather than Battle Creek as the move to Battle Creek is partly influenced by Dean. Since in this story season six hasn't happened, it'd be a bit contradictory. ;)

* * *

Jordan sat cross-legged against the bed, hands behind her head, looking up at their crazy wall. Dean was sitting at the table, massaging his head, and Sam was pacing. The full extent of their knowledge was pasted up on the wall in long rows. Every theft they knew, or heavily suspected, was the work of their gold thief was up there. They'd been looking them over for something like three days now, and they'd gotten nowhere.

"It has to be something he took," Sam murmured, half to himself. "Has to be."

"He didn't do much when he wasn't being a high-class klepto," Dean said, in a kind of agreement. "Reveled in his plunder and drank a lot of wine, apparently. The police think he met with a fencer for some of his goods, but that meet was a month ago at least."

Jordan snickered. "Plunder, really?"

"Loot," said Dean.

"Treasure," suggested Jordan.

"_Booty_," said Dean triumphantly, and while Jordan dissolved into a fit of giggles, Dean grinned at Sam. Sam was gazing fixedly at the crazy wall and didn't notice. "What's up?" Dean asked him.

"Well," said Sam. "He was killed in Long Island, but this wasn't always where he came out to play, is it? If we take away the jobs that weren't in Long Island—" He reached up and began to systematically pull down sheets of paper, until they were left with a disjointed handful. He took a step back to look at them, head cocked to the side.

"Run of the mill stuff," said Dean, coming to look at them more closely. "Stuff you could get at the local jewelry store."

"Except," said Sam, "for this one right here." He yanked it down and handed it to Dean, whose eyebrows hiked upward before he passed it on to Jordan. She pulled an expression almost identical to Dean's.

" 'Antique bracelet, intricate engravings, gold,' " she read. The top of the report marked the owner as Sir John Milton. She looked up at the boys. "And the cops seriously fell for this?"

"Not big fans of poetry, I guess," said Sam. "I'm thinking we should probably check it out."

"Oh god," said Jordan.

The boys looked at her.

"What?" Sam asked.

Jordan clamped a hand to her stomach, looking panicked. "Oh _god_," she said again, and then let out an agonized moan. Now her boys looked concerned as well as baffled, especially when she rolled to her feet and all but ran for the bathroom. A few moments later she bellowed, "_Sam_!"

"Uh-oh," said Dean.

Gingerly, Sam went up to the bathroom door, raised a hand, and knocked. "What's wrong, Jordan?" he asked, trying to be quiet, but in a hotel room this cheap, secrets didn't keep.

"I need you to do something really, really important for me," said Jordan's voice. "It involves a credit card, a cell phone, and a trip down the toiletry aisle of the supermarket."

Dean gave Sam an incredulous look. "Tell me you didn't knock her up."

Sam's head swiveled around so fast he cricked it, his color totally gone, but then Jordan's voice said, "Don't be a moron, Dean, I forgot to bring tampons." When Dean started to smile, she said abruptly, "And if you make a crack about this, it'll be _you_ who makes the girly run, okay there, hot stuff?"

Dean stopped smiling.

* * *

An hour later, Sam and Dean and Jordan were sitting in the Impala, staring out half-fogged windows at what was very clearly an abandoned lot. Dean turned down his Aerosmith CD and turned to face his brother and Jordan. "This guy is starting to piss me off," he said.

"You're not alone on that one, toots," said Jordan, scooting closer to the window and rubbing at the condensation until she could see better. The dying oak tree in the center of the lot moved wearily in the wind. "Fake name, fake address … so what now?"

"Now," said Dean, "we call Bobby."

He dug out his cell phone and flipped it open, but instead of dialing Bobby, he stared down at the screen. Jordan saw Sam give the screen a double-take.

"What?" she asked, leaning forward. Dean's thumb jabbed at the end key until the screen went blank.

"Dean," said Sam.

"Shut up, let me think," Dean snapped. Jordan reached over and tapped his shoulder gently, and watched as Dean's color rose. Yup. There wasn't a doubt in her mind who the messages had been from.

Lisa.

Jordan took out her own cell phone and dialed Bobby, letting Dean mull things over in peace. He'd had a rough time of it lately. He was trying, hard as he could, to pretend like he was still twenty and ready to take on the world. Jordan knew better. He was closing in on thirty and ready to take on a family, that's what he was, and by family she didn't mean Sam, either.

"Yo," said Bobby, on the other end.

"Yo yourself, cowboy," said Jordan. "What's shakin' at the OK Corral?"

Bobby didn't answer right away, which was a bad omen if there ever was one. Then he said, "Dean listening?"

"Affirmative, Bravo Leader."

"I'll be brief, then. Lisa called me, and it sounds to me like she could use some help."

Jordan made an uncertain sound. Bobby grunted his agreement. "Yeah, I don't think Dean's ready for that either. Which was why I was crossing my fingers Sam or you would call first. How fast can you hightail it out of there?"

"Kind of in the middle of something here, Bobby," Jordan said, drawing the immediate attention of the boys. She shifted so that she wasn't looking into their faces.

"What, and them two boys suddenly can't work a job without you there to hold their hands? Move your ass, Delaine."

"Sir yes sir," said Jordan, irritably, then added, "Be there ASAP, bossman. Okay?"

"Okay," agreed Bobby. He paused. "And thanks, kid." He hung up, and Jordan turned to face the expectant faces of the Winchester boys.

"Um," she said. Their eyebrows rose, simultaneously, and she knew they were sensing an oncoming lie. So she told the truth, or part of it. "Bobby's got something he wants me to do for him. It shouldn't take too long. So—uh—could you drop me off at the bus station?"

"Bobby's got a job for you?" Dean asked, sounding surprised.

"It's more like a favor, but yeah," Jordan agreed. "He wants me there ten minutes ago, though, so can we get a move on?"

The brothers exchanged looks. "Yeah," said Dean. "Sure."

They drove back to the hotel, so that she could pack up her things, and then drove straight to the bus station. Neither of the boys said much, for which Jordan was glad; she wasn't sure she could lie to them if they asked her directly. For that matter, she wasn't even sure if she _should_ lie.

Sam offered to go with her to the bus office to get the ticket, but she turned him down. She put it off as her being independently quirky, but she could tell from the looks on their faces that neither Winchester believed her. She leaned in Sam's window, hesitated, and then kissed him.

His hands reached up and buried themselves in her hair, and he whispered into her ear, "Call me later. Tell me the truth."

Oh yeah. They _really_ didn't believe her.

" 'Kay," she breathed, and drew back. She waved at them as they drove away, and then bought a one-way ticket to Cicero.


	4. Beware of Papa Bear

Chapter Fourrrrrr. :D This one isn't exactly action-packed, but I do introduce Jordan's newest accessory, a stainless Sig-Sauer P232. I figured she needed a weapon of her own. I mean, she's got the GTO, she's got the sneakers, and now she has a Sig. ;) I have a picture of it I wanted to link you guys to, but FF is being friendly today, and won't let me. So. Google Images, search "stainless Sig-Sauer P232." xD

Enjoy!

* * *

It was a nice house; Jordan could see why Dean liked it. And when the door opened, Jordan could see why Dean liked _her_. Lisa Braeden didn't look like Dean's usual hardcore party girl, but she was gorgeous, and Jordan suspected that in her college days, Lisa had probably been a lot more party than she looked now. She was wearing jeans and a wrap sweater, her hair sleek and ironed, and looked, really, like a suburban mom. Neat. Tidy. But most importantly, she looked normal.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Jordan stuck out a hand. "I'm Jordan—Jordan Delaine?" When Lisa continued to look blankly at her, Jordan said uncertainly, "Bobby did call you, right?"

"Bobby," Lisa repeated, sounding relieved. "He said he was sending someone, I just assumed—"

"That it'd be one of the brothers?" Lisa nodded. "Well, Dean's my best friend and I'm sort-of-kind-of dating his brother, soo … I guess you could call me an honorary Winchester."

Lisa's lips jerked into a smile that seemed a smidge too automatic. "Couldn't resist the Winchester charm?"

Jordan shrugged. "The boys took me in. And Sam just—happened. I don't think we've actually talked about it yet. Just … is what it is, I guess."

"Déjà vu," Lisa said, and opened the door wide enough for Jordan to step through. "It's good of you to come, Jordan. I wasn't sure what else to do, you know?" She paused. "You _are_ a hunter, right?"

"That was part of the taking-in bit," said Jordan, smiling. "I'm actually pretty good at it."

"Good," said Lisa, "because I have a bit of a problem."

* * *

Jordan waited until well past midnight to get out her phone and call Sam. It wasn't because she was worried about Lisa overhearing—she was worried about Dean. He was going to be royally pissed if he found out they'd all gone behind his back, and bodies would drop.

"Hey," said Sam, his voice hushed. "I can't wait for you to get back, Jory, it's crazy depressing without you around."

Jordan flushed. "It's only been a day, you big lug."

"Might as well have been a month. We're already bickering like children. What'd you find out?"

"Well, for one thing, Ben is a _ridiculously_ cute kid. If Lisa didn't swear up and down that it wasn't true, I'd say he was Dean-spawn for sure."

"Yeah, I know, I've met him."

"Have you met his hair metal collection? Because it's glorious."

"Jordan."

"Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on. I think it's something called an impa shilup. I did my due diligence on the Internet, and it fits. Four women had disappeared so far, all at the stroke of midnight, right out of their beds. And Lisa's been seeing shadows where there shouldn't be any."

Sam swore softly. "I'll check Dad's journal, see what it says."

"Maybe we should tell Dean now, Sam."

"No. Not yet. Bobby's given us a good lead to track down, and if we let the trail get too cold, we'll lose him for sure."

"What if I can't handle it?"

"Of course you can handle it," Sam scoffed, and she knew, deep down, that the real reason he was putting it off was because Dean would go apeshit. Not just because they'd kept it from him—he'd toss his pot for sure when he heard about that one—but because of Lisa and Ben. If they were in danger … hooboy.

"I'll keep a lid on it, best as I can," Jordan told him. "I did the usual stuff. Salt, wards, all that. Call me back with whatever else you can find."

"I will."

"Night, Sam."

"Night."

He hung up, and Jordan went back out into the hall. The guest room was across from Lisa's, but she wasn't going to take any chances, not with Dean's girl. Moving so that the floor didn't creak, Jordan sank down on her heels beside Lisa's door, the stainless Sig P232 Dean had gotten her for her birthday held quietly in one hand. It was a good gun; it'd do a fair bit of damage when it needed to, and it shot damned straight.

On the floor beside her, on the off chance the Sig wasn't enough, Jordan had Dean's Desert Eagle loaded and ready. She didn't think she'd need to use it. She strongly suspected that if she did, she'd need far more than a couple of pistols. No, if it went that far, there was only one thing that'd get her and Lisa and the kid out all right—a Winchester. And she sure as hell didn't mean the rifle.

* * *

"Jordan?"

Jordan awoke with a start, tensing so suddenly that she'd jerked her Sig up towards the sound of Lisa's voice before she even had a chance to think. Her other hand was already groping for the Desert Eagle, but her brain caught up with her before she managed to snatch it up, and with a ragged sigh Jordan relaxed back against the wall. "Christ," she said, looking up at Lisa. "You scared the crap out of me. What time is it?"

"A little after seven. I have to take Ben to school," said Lisa. She was smiling down at Jordan, who was just catching on to the fact that she'd fallen asleep and slept straight through Lisa's morning routine.

"Oh god," said Jordan pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes. "Dean'll kill me if he finds out me I fell asleep on watch."

"I won't tell," said Lisa, winking at her, and descended down the stairs. On the plus side, Lisa was clearly alive and well—no thanks to Jordan, who was feeling miserable and totally useless.

* * *

"Morning," Jordan said to Ben, joining him at the breakfast table. He saluted her with a bit of toast. "How'd last night go?"

"Good," he said. "Didn't hear anything. Sweet guns."

"Thanks," said Jordan. "The big one's Dean's."

Ben's eyes twinkled. "Duh."

"Right," said Jordan, smiling a little. "Duh."

Her phone buzzed. With a longing glance at the breakfast Lisa had set out, Jordan took her phone into the other room and answered it. "Madame Beatrice's All-Female Massage Service, how may I satisfy you today?"

"You actually had me fooled for a minute there," Sam's voice said, and Jordan grinned.

"Yeah?"

"Nope," he said, popping his P, and then laughed. The sucker. "Okay, so I did some looking, and I couldn't find anything on your impa shilup, but I got close. There are some related species of shadow beings, and they all have pretty much the same weakness."

"Which is?"

"Positivity." He paused, as if waiting to hear Jordan laugh, which, admittedly, she was very close to doing. "It's death by antithesis, I think. Light, goodness, happiness. That sort of stuff."

"So you want me to set up some lamps and think good thoughts?"

"Worth a try, Jor. Bobby thinks they might have some issues cedar wood, which could come in handy. And I'm trying to find out whether or not some classic purification spells might do the trick."

Jordan sighed. "Sounds like a lot of maybes, Sam. How's the job going out there?"

It was Sam's turn to sigh. "There've been more deaths. It looks as if our friendly neighborhood gold thief may have fenced the bracelet already."

"The meet he had a month ago."

"Right. But I don't think the rightful owner knows exactly who took the bracelet on, because all of a sudden people in the same trade have been going belly up. Literally. We found the last one in the water." There was a moment of silence, and then Sam said in too cheerful a voice, "Oh, hey, Dean. Just giving Jory an update."

"Drop the smiles and giggles, Sam, now he knows you're in on it," Jordan hissed, but too late. Dean's voice growled into the phone, "What the hell is going on with you two?"

"Uh," said Jordan, and then behind her Ben said, "Are you going to finish your breakfast, Jordan?"

Jordan clamped a hand down on her phone, the blood draining out of her face. Ben looked taken aback by her reaction. "Yes," said Jordan, fixing on a smile. "Definitely. I just have to finish this phone call, and I'll be right in."

"Okay," said Ben, uncertainly, and he went back into the kitchen.

"Sorry," Jordan said to Dean, who was dead silent. "Had to turn down the TV, couldn't hear myself think."

Dean didn't answer. Then he said, "Uh-huh," and the line went dead. Oh no. Oh crud. Jordan ran a hand through her hair, feeling the teensiest bit panicked. That was Dean's I-know-what-you're-up-to voice. He wasn't going to chew out Sam. He wasn't even going to chew out her. He was going to call Bobby and get the truth. And then—and then they'd _all_ be in big, fat doodoo.

Jordan turned towards the kitchen, watching Lisa take Ben's empty cereal bowl, and felt a pang of guilt in her stomach. They should have told Dean right off, whether or not he was ready to see Lisa again—which he really, really wasn't. The total shutdown he went through every time someone mentioned her was evidence enough of that.

She knew one thing for certain: it was sure as shootin' too late now.


	5. Impa Shilup Attack

So I thought I posted this Wednesday, but I guess I didn't, so ... here it is! xD This chapter was a great relief to write. Doing long plots means it takes longer to work up steam, and I start to miss action scenes after a while. So, gratuitous violence ahead. ;) Also a brief cameo by Dean's gun of choice, the Colt 1911. Hopefully you all enjoy this chapter!

* * *

Jordan was pretty fit, if she did say so herself; working on her GTO and running with the Winchesters had afforded her a pretty good physique. Her routine was the boys' routine, which is to say, a whole lot of manly push-ups and pull-ups and crunches. On the second day Jordan was at Lisa's, Lisa caught her at it and made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort.

"If I hadn't believed you before, I'd believe you now," she said. "That's Dean's morning work out if I've ever seen it."

Jordan froze mid-push-up and felt a squirm of self-consciousness. She'd always felt that it was a bit unattractive, going all GI Jane, but with the boys it hadn't mattered. In front of Lisa was another matter. Flushing like mad, Jordan got to her feet, but Lisa wasn't laughing at her, she was coming in to sit on the floor beside her. Jordan dropped back down automatically.

"Have you tried yoga?" Lisa asked. Her dark eyes smiled at Jordan, and Jordan felt her unease slip away. "If you're traveling around with the Winchesters all day, every day, I bet you could use some relaxation techniques."

"Audrey was always trying to get me to go with her," Jordan said, in a tone of voice that was slightly lacking in her usual flair.

"Audrey is a friend of yours?"

Jordan smiled. "Yeah, you could say that. She was my best friend from before."

Before she'd met the Winchesters.

"Well, she's right." Lisa leaned in. "I used to be a yoga teacher, you know. So what do you say? Want to learn?"

One of Jordan's eyebrows hitched upward. "Teach away."

While yoga lacked something in the beat-out-your-rage department, it was at the very least soothing, and by noon Lisa and Jordan were in sweats, with mats laid out in the front room. They were both laughing, most of the time at nothing at all, but just because it felt good to laugh. Every so often Lisa would tweak Jordan's form a little, but on the whole, she let Jordan be. The girl was a natural.

They were in the middle of complicated new form when the doorbell rang. Jordan collapsed down onto the mat in a fit of giggles. "Oh, that one's hard!" she said breathlessly, as Lisa, laughing at her, went to get the door.

Silence.

Jordan got to her feet so fast she felt a muscle pull in her back, but she ignored it, hand already on her Sig, left ready on the table. By the time she'd turned around, though, Dean had said, "Hey, Lisa."

_Oh shit_, Jordan thought, as Dean saw her and growled, "Jordan."

"Come on in, Dean," Lisa said calmly, for which Jordan gave her kudos in the face of Dean's truly spectacular glower. Dean walked in past Lisa and went straight for Jordan.

"Tell me what the hell is going on _now_," he snarled. Jordan put her hands up and backed away as he advanced, retreating until she bumped, hard, into one of Lisa's end tables.

"Dean," said Lisa, behind them.

"Tell me _now_, Jordan," Dean said, his voice so low and gravelly that Jordan felt an actual stab of fear. Not that he'd hurt her—Dean would never hurt her. That he'd be so mad at her that he'd ditch her, though ...

"Don't hate me," Jordan said, sounding as terrified as she looked, and Dean's head jerked back as if she'd hit him. It seemed to derail him long enough to focus, anyway, and he glanced back at Lisa.

"I called Bobby for help," Lisa said, her voice steady, "because you weren't answering your phone. He sent Jordan. She's just trying to help, Dean."

Dean's eyes shifted back to Jordan, and she said in a breathless babble, "I'm pretty sure it's an impa shilup and it's killed like four people and Sam's looking into how to kill it, we have some ideas, it's been lurking around but it hasn't gotten in yet so I think something's working and I stole your Desert Eagle it's in my bedroom you can have it back I swear." When he didn't answer her, Jordan asked tentatively, "Dean?"

"I don't _hate_ you, Jory," Dean said, in his normal voice, and the relief was such that Jordan sagged against the end table.

"Still a teensy bit mad, though, right?" He didn't look at her. "You said you weren't ready and we believed you, that's all."

"This is different," he said.

"I know it was a bad call."

Dean's head lifted to look at Lisa. "Are you okay? Ben?"

"We're fine, thanks to Jordan," Lisa said. She was smiling, and Jordan felt, again, terribly impressed by her. No wonder Dean was in love with her. Jordan had never met a woman who could handle Dean in a temper like that. "Come on into the kitchen, I'll get you a beer."

Jordan stayed where she was. _Let the grownups talk amongst themselves_, she thought to herself, and sank down onto the yoga mat. She put her head in her hands and drew in a long breath. What a mess. She should have gone with her gut and told Dean from the start. Well, you know what they say about hindsight.

From within the kitchen she heard the gentle _pop_ of a beer being opened, and then Lisa said, "Go easy on her, okay? She was just trying to protect you. Don't give me that look. You're mad because you needed protecting, not that they kept it from you."

"I'm a big kid now—I can dress myself and everything," Dean said sarcastically. Lisa sighed.

"She meant well, Dean. They all did."

"I can handle it myself, Lisa."

"That why I had to call Bobby to get some help?"

Dean didn't answer. Lisa was right, of course. If Dean had had a grip on himself—had a grip on his relationship with _them_—he'd have been in Cicero days ago.

* * *

There were two of them now sitting outside Lisa's door, although Jordan was reasonably sure (it was just a guess) that he'd have rather been on the inside than the out. Jordan had her Sig-Sauer and Dean had his Colt 1911. The Desert Eagle was out of sight—and by out of sight, of course, she meant stuffed into Dean's belt.

"Ben was really happy to see you," Jordan commented, fiddling with her Sig. Dean was watching her hands as if he was worried she might accidentally shoot someone. "I don't know what you're worried about."

"Come off it, Jordan," Dean growled.

Jordan raised her eyebrows. "Sorry. It just seems to me that, you know, you fit here really well."

"It's not meant to be."

"Says who?"

"Says me." His jaw flexed, and she saw his fingers tighten compulsively on his gun. "I'm a hunter, Jordan, and that's all I'm ever going to me. That's not the sort of life I want for them."

"Seems to me that's Lisa's decision, not yours," said Jordan. Dean glowered at her and she put up her free hand in defeat. They settled into silence, each watching one end of the hallway, and stayed that way until midnight. Midnight being, of course, playtime for the local big bad monster.

Dean had rubbed out several of Jordan's warding marks earlier that evening. It was a calculated risk. They'd never catch up to the thing in the open air; they needed to get it inside, where they could grapple with it mano-a-mano. And their only chance of getting it inside was if it was _allowed_ inside.

It was midnight on the dot when they heard the first sounds of movement. Dean had left most of the wards up in Lisa's room—he wasn't going to take _that_ risk—but the wards for the window at the end of the hall were rubbed away entirely. Sure enough, there came the sound of claws scrabbling against the glass, and slowly, slowly, the window eased open.

Neither Dean nor Jordan moved. They were dealing with an unknown quantity here, a monster they had only a passing idea as to how to kill, and no idea at all as to how it actually hunted. Dean was betting that the thing was all but blind, and Jordan didn't care to bet at all, but as lumpy, gruesome shadow leaked into the hall, she began to think maybe Dean was right. If it had been lurking outside Lisa's house all day, it might have seen Dean destroy the wards, but here it was regardless.

They waited until it was within arm's length. Dean's fingers flexed on his gun—the impa shilup drew closer—and then it hissed. It was a sound like a tea kettle going off, and it sent a shock of fear through Jordan so potent that for a moment she froze.

Dean didn't freeze, not even for a second. He brought up his Colt and fired a single round through the shadow's head. For a moment they all stood still, looking at one another—that is, if shadows have eyes—and then the impa shilup screamed. It was a horrible sound. Jordan fought the impulse to cover her ears and unloaded her Sig into it.

"Dean?" Lisa's voice yelled from inside the bedroom, and there was an echoing cry from Ben's room.

"Stay in your room!" Dean shouted, and his eyes moved, once, to Jordan's. Without any hesitation she dove for the cedar wood stake they'd carved after dinner. The impa shilup threw Dean into a wall, paying no attention whatsoever to Jordan, and when Dean fought back, dug its claws into Dean's shoulder. Dean was yelled hoarsely—Jordan raised the cedar stake—and with the full weight of her body behind it, drove the stake down into the thing's chest. The impa shilup made an odd, surprised sound, and after a moment of trembling whining, burst like a popped balloon.

Dark shreds of black flung in every direction and sank wetly into the shadows, merging with them and finally disappearing. Dean gripped the wound in his shoulder, oozing slowly with dark blood, and gave Jordan a roguish grin. "Good aim," he said.

Lisa's door opened first. Her eyes swept the hall, and though she tried to keep her face still, Jordan could see that she was terrified. "Dean? Jordan?"

"I'm fine," Jordan said. "Help Dean."

Jordan watched Lisa's eyes slide from Dean's face to his shoulder. The color drained out of her face, and Jordan said, "Breathe. He's okay, he just needs wrapping up." Hopefully.

Lisa nodded, but it was still a long moment before she turned around and went to find bandages. Jordan went to go see Ben. He was sitting on his bed, still and quiet, but his hands were knotted tightly together. "High five," Jordan said cheerfully. "We killed that ugly SOB."

Smiling a little now, Ben high-fived her. And then, because she knew what he really wanted to know, she added, "Dean got it in the shoulder, but your mom's looking after him. A couple of days and he'll be right as rain."

"You sure?" Ben asked. She could tell he already believed her.

"Yeah," she said, giving him her best smile. "I'm sure."


	6. Human Sacrifice, Aisle One

Okay! By the end of this chapter, the Massive Flashback will have been brought back around to normal time. xD I'm sure you'll all love that! (And having Sam back ... ;D ) Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

Although Dean insisted—at high volumes—that he was fine, Lisa kept him confined either to the bed or to the couch, neither option, of course, appealing to Dean. "It's just a shoulder wound! I've survived worse!" Jordan could imagine. And from the look on Lisa's face, so could she, which was probably the reason Lisa was being so adamant. Ben thought Christmas had come early. If Dean wasn't in bed (which he rarely was, unless Lisa could be persuaded to join him) he was sitting on the couch, where Ben could easily corral him into playing video games with him. To no one's surprise, Dean was a natural.

"Get him, get him!" Ben shouted, thumbs moving at the speed of light over his controller. Lips pressed tightly together, a glimmer of intensity in his eyes, Dean gunned down the monsters crawling over Ben's character. The sound of rapid gunfire echoed through the living room and pounded inside Jordan's head.

"Oh my _god_," she groaned, massaging her temples. "Twenty-four seven. _It never stops_."

"Welcome to your future," said Lisa drily. She was sipping quietly at a mug of tea, no doubt a blend to promote peace and serenity, of which there was precious little at the Braeden house. "Should you ever have kids, I mean."

"Oy," snapped Jordan. "Who said anything about kids?"

Lisa's eyebrows came up, and Jordan saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Dean had turned on the couch in order to look at her. Whoops. Did that sound as if she'd done something incredibly stupid, like start fantasizing about possible futures? Wedding gowns and diamond rings and all that was one thing, but what followed inevitably on the heels of _those_ thoughts were all the things that could go wrong. Several weeks of this, combined with a total lack of understanding as to what exactly Jordan and Sam _were_—friends with benefits, casual but not exclusive, exclusive, serious?—had driven Jordan to the point of being totally incapable of even thinking about it without becoming hostile.

"Not me," murmured Lisa, eyebrows still raised, and took another calm sip of tea. Either the tea was working or Lisa had nerves of steel, because Jordan was beginning to fantasize about loading a full clip into Ben's little game box now too.

Her mind a confused tangle of Sam, video games, and perplexing ex-yoga teachers, Jordan was in no way, shape, or form ready to talk to Sam, but this of course meant that this was precisely the time he chose to call her. The number he used wasn't the one she had programmed in her phone, though, and so she answered without any expectations as to who was on the other end. In all honesty she thought it might be Bobby, who frequently changed phone numbers.

"Jordan," said Sam's voice, full of relief. "Thank God. I was worried you might not pick up."

This was a strange thing to say—hello, voice mail?—and so with a great deal of trepidation, Jordan asked, "…Why?"

"Because this is the only phone call I get."

Ah. "Way to go, Tex."

"Don't be snarky, I don't have a lot of time. Just—get down here, okay? Bring Dean."

There were several problems with this, starting and ending with Dean's shoulder, and Lisa's lockdown. "Uh," said Jordan, her mind spinning through all the ways she could conceivably break Dean out, before she realized her real problem was how she was going to break out _Sam_. "Okay. What happened?"

"I'll tell you when you get down here. But it was, uh, in the—" He paused, then lowered his voice significantly. "—in the line of duty."

In other words, he'd been trying to run down their Big Baddy and had run into problems with badges.

"Well," said Jordan with a sigh, "them's the odds. We'll be down ASAP."

"Thanks, Jory."

"No prob."

"And—" He paused again, and she heard in the background another man's voice, telling him that his time was up. "And …"

"And?" Jordan prompted.

Sam didn't answer for a beat. Then he said, "Tell Dean I said hello," and hung up. Jordan stared at her phone incredulously. Because she was already grumpy and feeling moderately pissed at the world, she mimicked back the phone, "Tell Dean I said hello," in her prissiest voice.

"Not the sign off you were hoping for?" Lisa asked, on target as always.

"Don't know what you mean," muttered Jordan, and leaned towards the couch to say matter-of-factly, "Sam's in jail. We'll have to leave here sooner rather than later and bust him out before they transfer him to county."

"You know," interrupted Lisa, "you could always _talk_ to him."

"I don't need a shrink, Lees," Jordan said, but she said it kindly, and left the room to check up on her Sig. It didn't really need cleaning, but if they were going to be pulling a jailbreak, she wanted to make doubly sure. You know. Just in case.

* * *

Two months later, Dean and Jordan had nothing. No Big Baddy, no leads, and no Sam. They sat together on the hood of the Impala, drinking beers and staring moodily into the distance, wracking their brains as to what they could try next. Dean tapped the lip of his beer bottle against his lips speculatively. "You know," he said finally, "it's been nagging at me a while now."

"What has?" Jordan asked. She wasn't really paying any attention to what he was saying. Her eyes were on his hair, which she'd cut yesterday, and looked positively ragged compared to her previous tries. She thought maybe she'd spring to have him stuck in a salon chair, because if Lisa saw him like that, she might just send him back.

Not that Jordan was plotting Dean's return to Cicero, or anything. That was way too Jane Austen and not nearly enough John Wayne.

Even so …

"—Texas," Dean finished, and Jordan realized she'd missed the entire thing. She was already starting to pull her face into what she hoped was a sincerely apologetic expression when Dean rolled his eyes and repeated patiently, "The way we keep getting repelled from Sam reminds me of some mojo we came up against in Texas once."

"Mojo, huh?" Jordan mused. "Out of my league, I think. The only kind of mojo I know is warding. Basic stuff."

"Out of mine, too," Dean admitted ruefully. "I don't like to mess with that crap. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. There was this South American shaman in town, and he was wrecking total havoc on the place. He had this ward-spell-thing that acted a hell of a lot like what's blocking us from Sam."

While their leads on Big Baddy were positively nil, they hadn't done a whole heck of a lot to fix that; their primary concern was getting Sam out of jail. Dean couldn't visit him without blowing one or all of his aliases, and when Jordan had tried, the television in the reception area had been playing a crime show recap of the mall poltergeist that had started her run with the Winchesters. Nothing was said about a poltergeist, of course, that would be craziness itself, but there was plenty of mention of one Jordan Delaine, and a handy little photo to match. Jordan turned right around and didn't look back.

"Well, okay," said Jordan. "How did you fix it last time?"

Dean rubbed his temple with a knuckle. "Damned if I remember."

Jordan heaved a sigh. This was going over. "Just call Cas and have Sam airlifted out of there. Or—winglifted, whatever."

"Yeah, because so much has changed since the last time we asked," Dean said sarcastically, and took another swig of beer. Castiel had had some moral qualms about breaking out Sam, although it had sounded to Jordan as if he was actually waiting to see how long it would take Dean to beg. Rather than see this as a mark of cruelty, Jordan took it as a promising sign of Castiel's emerging sense of humor. She'd also left herself a post-it note reminding her to sock Castiel a good one for leaving her—whatever Sam was—in jail for two months.

"Then I do believe it's time to consult the oracle," she said, hopping down off the hood of the Impala. Dean looked at her blankly.

"Dad's journal?" he asked.

Jordan grinned. "No, doofus. Bobby."

* * *

"Best as I can tell," Bobby said some hours later, having looked through his various tomes, "you're looking at Aztec mojo, which means your best bet would be an Aztec purification ritual."

"Are we looking at a human sacrifice?" Jordan asked. "Because I volunteer the waitress at Johnny's."

Dean smirked at her. "Oh, come on. Like you didn't have it coming."

"Watch it, sonny, or I'll shave your head while you sleep."

"Shut up, the both of you," said Bobby, and Jordan shut her mouth so fast her teeth clicked. "No human sacrifice, I'm afraid, but I do have a shopping list. Got a pen and paper?"

"I'll let my secretary handle it," Jordan said, getting up from the table and leaving Dean to write everything down. He was grinning as she left.

* * *

They had everything they needed piled up on the floor of the motel room, but problem was that it required knowing who was working the mojo in the first place. This was a puzzle all its own, so Dean broke out the beers again (it'd worked well enough last time) and they each parked themselves on a bed to think about it.

"It's not the arresting officer, at least," said Dean, leaning against the headboard. "He'd have been on duty all this time, and this mojo needs proximity more frequently than he'd get away."

"A guard, maybe?" suggested Jordan.

"He wouldn't have been there from the get-go, and we couldn't get to Sam even at the precinct."

"True." Jordan thought hard. "What about our Big Baddy?"

Dean pursed his lips. "It's possible, but that's working off the assumption that Sam didn't already get him."

"True again." They thought some more, drinking their beers and staring into space. Jordan was sidelined by the sudden idea that this wasn't a whole lot different from Lisa's yoga and tea, except that Dean and Jordan weren't contorting into shapes and their beverage of choice had more fun under the cap than tea did. This made her snort with laughter, cluing Dean into the fact that her mind wasn't on the ball, so to speak, and without further ado he chucked a pillow at her.

"Do you want Sam back or not?" he demanded, and she chucked it right back.

"That's the stupidest question I've ever heard, Dean Winchester," snapped Jordan, genuinely irritated by this.

"So focus. Who's been near Sam since the start?"

"Besides his lawyer, you mean?" she said, trying to sound nasty, except that her sarcasm was the truth. Their eyes widened.

"Nice work, Delaine," said Dean, already heading for the table, where there was a copy of Sam's paperwork. They'd nicked it under cover of darkness from the precinct he'd been arrested at once the police had moved Sam to county and the protection had lifted. On it there was a little notation about Sam Winchester's attorney—they skimmed past the "state appointed" and landed directly on "John Smith."

"_Really_?" Jordan demanded, staring over Dean's shoulder. Dean's scowl was so deep he looked fit to eat metal. "John Smith? That's got to be an alias."

"It is," Dean said. The muscles in his jaw flexed. "We need to get to the lawyer and Sam at the same time. Someplace where we can set up the counter-mojo beforehand without attracting notice."

Jordan hummed gently under her breath. "I think I've got an idea about that, actually …"


	7. Men Are Retards

Sam's back! :D Well, technically he's been back all along, since Jordan freed him in Chapter One, but who needs technicalities? And thanks to everyone who's been reviewing! You make my day :)

* * *

Because they'd just broken Sam out of jail, and hadn't seen him in two very, very long months, they all decided to celebrate. They chose to celebrate one town over, which perhaps wasn't the smartest of ideas—the cops could sometimes do things that were almost competent, like follow them—but it was what it was, and away they went. They found a grubby bar-cum-dance-club off the main highway, locked up the Impala, and spent no time whatsoever getting inside.

Jordan allowed Sam the time it took him to finish a drink with Dean before dragging him out onto the dance floor. She thought she'd done fairly well in the clingy department, but facts were facts, and the fact was that she had missed him like crazy. He was laughing as she led him out, but when she said "Shut up and hold me," so quietly he almost didn't hear it, he did as he was told. The music was fast, but it didn't matter. Jordan wasn't there to enjoy the rhythm. She put her arms around Sam's waist, buried her face in his chest, and swayed.

"Miss me?" Sam murmured over her head. She didn't answer. It wasn't the sort of question she'd deign with an answer. Miss me indeed. Of _course_ she'd missed him. If she hadn't had Dean around to keep her company, she'd have lost her marbles completely. "You know," Sam continued, because being quiet and enjoying the moment was clearly impossible, "I did some thinking—"

"There's a shocker," Jordan said into his shirt, feeling grumpy. All she wanted was five minutes. _Five_. That's all.

"—and it occurred to me that we haven't really discussed things."

Jordan heaved a sigh and lifted her head to look at him. "Like what, Sam?"

"I don't believe I ever properly asked you out, for one thing." Jordan stared at him. He was smiling a little, like he'd expected her to react this way, and it only made her more flustered. She was painfully aware of the fact that he'd never asked her out, but she had somewhere along the line assumed that this had been intentional, and was, you know, symbolic.

"No," said Jordan, too taken aback by this turn of events to think of anything more coherent. She was sure that there were any number of cheerful, witty things she could say here, all of which would say, "never bothered me a bit, darling!" Unfortunately, all of these witty little things had flown clear out of her head, and she was left staring up at Sam with her mouth half-open, wondering where on earth he was going with this.

"No I never asked, or no you don't want to be my girlfriend?" His eyes were twinkling. He was _laughing_ at her. Jordan felt anger bubbling in her stomach. There was nothing funny about this. Didn't he know how much she'd agonized over this, how much she'd wracked her brain trying to figure it out?

"I'll have to think about it," Jordan said coolly. She disengaged her arms from his middle, ignored the surprised look on his face, and strode away. And if she added a little more spice to her walk than she normally would have, well, that was just a coincidence.

* * *

She was locked in the bathroom, but the first rule of motel rooms—thin walls—held true, and she heard them even though they whispered. Sam was wondering what he'd done. Dean was making sympathetic but equally mystified sounds. From the sound of it, they were drinking beers as well, two guys commiserating over the baffling ways of the opposite sex.

She'd been mad before, sure. Mad enough to be a bit of a jerk about the whole thing. But the conversation she was hearing now all but enraged her. The brief lull of calm she'd achieved had evaporated. Cheeks red with suppressed anger, Jordan worked open the motel's bathroom window, stood on the toilet, and crawled out.

The voices of the Winchester boys vanished. She took a deep, steadying breath, trying to get her bearings, but the ground was cold and she was barefoot—not at all conducive to clear thinking. She took her phone out of her pocket and opened up her contacts list.

Audrey, Ben, Bobby, Dean, Lisa, Sam; six names, two of which were automatically vetoed. Bobby and Ben followed suit for obvious reasons, leaving her with two choices, Audrey and Lisa. Jordan already knew what Audrey's advice would be, and it sure as hell wouldn't be chaste, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

"Hello?" Lisa's voice asked thirty seconds later, as Jordan wandered barefoot out into the parking lot.

"Hey, Lisa," said Jordan. Her voice sounded dull even to her.

"Jordan," said Lisa, warmly. "So did everything go okay? Sam's out of jail?"

Jordan hopped over an oil spill onto the sidewalk. "Yeah, but I'm considering sending him back."

"Uh-oh," said Lisa. "What happened?"

Jordan wandered for a bit longer before asking, trying to decide what exactly _had_ happened. "We went dancing, right," she said, trying to put everything in order. "I just wanted to dance for a bit. He starts talking about how he never actually asked me out—"

"Which he didn't."

"Which he didn't, yeah, but the way he was acting, it was like he didn't _need_ to." Yes, that was it. "He was smiling like it was a sure thing. And it pissed me off, I guess. I told him I'd have to think about it."

"Wow," said Lisa.

"Yeah. I'd gotten over it by the time we got back to the motel, but then I overheard the boys talking about it, and neither of them had any idea why I'd been mad in the first place. I just want to _strangle_ them!"

Lisa made an impatient sound. "They're _both_ idiots."

"I don't know what to do," said Jordan, desperation creeping into her voice. "I was confused enough before, let alone—"

By the time she saw the van drive up beside her, it was too late. Jordan's phone fell to the ground and shattered on impact, the battery flying in one direction and the casing flying in the other.

And everything went dark.


	8. A La Nietszche

So, yes. Very short chapter. However I did everything I planned to do in this chapter, and adding filler would lessen it a bit, I think, so ... I feel as if I should explain myself, or apologize, or something. xD Well, anyway. I've already written Chapter Nine so there's that to look forward to if you hate this one. ;)

* * *

Sam and Dean were still drinking their beers when Dean's phone rang. He looked down at the glowing face and for a moment considered ignoring it, a knee-jerk reaction at best, but a moment later he flipped open the phone and put it to his ear. "Hey, Lees," he said.

"Something happened to Jordan," Lisa said, her voice urgent and worried. "Can you go and check on her, please? She called me about Sam and then the call just cut out. I thought I heard her cry out."

"What?" said Dean, taken aback. "Lisa, she's in the bathroom, we'd have heard it if she called you."

And then he understood. Jordan wasn't _in_ the bathroom. He forced opened the door just in case, and sure enough, there was the open window. He swore. "She's not here," he said.

"You have to find her, Dean."

She didn't need to tell him twice. He hung up without saying goodbye and looked up into his brother's eyes, the prickle of fear creeping up his spine the worst of omens. "Come on," he said.

All they would find would be her cell phone, broken, and black skid marks on the pavement. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Sam didn't say anything. The look in his eyes, when he finally met Dean's gaze, told Dean everything he needed to know. Sam was worried, but mostly he was afraid. Dean cleared his throat with difficulty. "You didn't finish the job."

"No," said Sam.

"But you were close."

Sam raked a hand through his hair, beginning to pace. "Yeah," he said finally. "Maybe too close."

"Close enough to get you thrown in prison and your girlfriend kidnapped?"

Dean didn't need to see Sam's agonized expression to know the answer.

* * *

Jordan awoke somewhere cool, dark, and damp. For a crazy moment she thought she was still in the demon's basement, that Castiel hadn't rescued her, and it had all been a wild hallucination. But there wasn't any barbed wire in sight, and she was lying on a table, not pinned against a wall.

The world beyond her existed in hues of blue and black and yellow, all bleeding together. They warped occasionally, became green and gruesome and bruise-like. That she could make out no distinct shapes told her she'd been drugged.

"Very good," a voice said. The voice reflected the room—or maybe the room reflected the voice. Cool. Dark. And possessed of a liquid-like gurgle that sounded as if he were talking around a mouthful of spit. "That's precisely what you are, Miss Delaine."

She moved, and that was when she discovered that she couldn't. There weren't any restraints keeping her there, however, and she found herself heavily reminded of the way demons could Darth Vader a person. A wet chuckle sounded from within the mutable colors. "Unfortunately that is not what _I_ am," he said. "And although it was not meant as a compliment, I appreciate the comparison to Darth Vader."

Her mouth wouldn't move, wouldn't expel the waiting retort. She found, suddenly, that she was terrified. Her bare toes in the cool air somehow made it worse, made her feel even more vulnerable.

"In case you are wondering why you are here," the voice said, ragged breath curling around the words, "I have prepared a little ditty for you."

Jordan hadn't been wondering that, not yet. She was certain he knew that as well as she did.

"_There once was a fella named Sam_," the voice sang, sounding creaky and inorganic, "_who traveled all over the land_. _He did all of us in, again and again, and_—that's as far as I got. Not enough syllables in the fourth line, I think."

Jordan thought it was repulsive. She thought _he_ was repulsive, for that matter, and squeezed her eyes shut in the hopes of blocking him out. The colors reappeared on the back of her eyelids, and the voice said, "No running away, I'm afraid. I'm going to use you to send a message."

Jordan wasn't sure she wanted to know what the message would be. She had a sudden vision of horse heads in bed sheets and tried not to panic.

"Cliché," said the voice. "I'm more creative than that."

That wasn't comforting.

"It's been a few centuries since there's been a hunter stupid enough to take me on," said the voice, "and I think perhaps it's because I've hidden too well. Human memory is short, after all. You're going to be my reminder. You're going to be my warning."

Out of the gloom of shifting colors and darkness loomed a face, a face that shouldn't have been there, as her eyes were still pressed resolutely shut—it was a face carved out of bone and stitched up with sinews, wrapped in black oily shadows that leaked and oozed continuously. It had no eyes. She almost wished it had eyes, something, anything, to distract from the crowded mouth, full of tall skinny teeth. The mouth widened—was it smiling?—and she saw, behind the teeth, a sinewy black tongue that moved and coiled like a snake.

It laughed.


	9. Dead Ends to Leads

A non-Jordan chapter. D: It was harder to write than I expected. I kept wanting to fling in one of her one-liners, and had to constantly rewrite them for the boys, or abandon them altogether. Hopefully it's not obvious! It was also horrendously difficult to only give Castiel a passing cameo. But right now he hasn't got anything to do and I couldn't think of much anything that he COULD do, you know? :( Ooh, I'm griping. haha IT'S NOT AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS. Enjoy! ;)

* * *

Dean Winchester was sitting in his Impala. His fingers rested on the steering wheel, laying still and quiet, and his head, cocked slightly to the side, was listening not to music, but to the quiet rustle of people walking past. He was listening for his brother's tread—had been expecting to hear it for nearly an hour now, but he was trying to be patient. Trying the whole inner-stillness thing.

It wasn't working.

Abruptly he threw open his door and got out, turning slowly in place to see all he could of the world around him. If Sam were around, he'd see him. His sasquatch of a brother stood out like a sore thumb. No Sam was forthcoming, though, and Dean found he was getting well and truly _pissed off_. Contact be damned, Dean should have gone with him.

Just when he was resolving to go looking for Sam, his brother appeared round a corner, walking brusquely and bearing a manila envelope under one arm. Sam gave him a fast look as he drew up to the car, one that said, very clearly, that Dean should have stayed in the car.

"Sorry," he said, and the brothers climbed together into the Impala. "Took a little longer than I thought—Jordan being taken spooked them."

"Good for them," said Dean, feeling bitter, and pulled out in front of a Prius in a crescendo of squealing tires. "What'd you find out?"

Two days. Jordan had been gone for two very long, very agonizing days. They were all having flashbacks to the last time she'd disappeared, and had even called down Castiel to help.

"She is beyond finding," Castiel had said, standing stonily in their motel room. "It is not a rune, as it was before. It is more—that she does not exist."

Sam's expression had been horrified. "She's _dead_?"

"Not dead," Castiel replied. "She's alive somewhere, or I would find her in Heaven. She is hidden, and hidden well."

Dean was incredulous. "But you're an angel."

Castiel had shrugged. Before he had vanished, though, he'd said, very quietly, "I'll do what I can." They had thought, until that moment, believed that Castiel would find her if they couldn't. But there had been a sick sort of comfort in the knowledge that Castiel believed Jordan would end up in Heaven. At least—if worst came to worst—she wouldn't end up downstairs.

In the end, they'd retraced Sam's steps, tracked down all his leads over again. He had found someone who had agreed to talk, for a price, and it was to them that they had gone once more, in the hopes that Sam's informant might have heard something. Dean looked over at his brother, who was shaking loose the contents of the manila envelope.

There was a receipt for a van rental, but it had been registered to John Smith again, and the phone number was a fake. There was no address. An interoffice memo was clipped to a blurred photo of a man, who could have in all honesty been anyone; the memo talked about "clean up duty" and asked that the employees be ready to "take care of things." There was a parking stub from a week ago, a page torn out of what looked like a potion-making handbook, and a handwritten receipt for half a ton of "quercus muehlenbergii."

Sam spread them out on the dashboard as Dean drove, trying to understand them. The nature of the items suggested that his informant had been there in order to pick them up, knew—perhaps well—the person who had taken Jordan. His thoughts skittered to a halt. Not a person, a monster. A thing.

"Focus, Sammy," said Dean, glancing over at him, and Sam sucked in a deep breath. Dean was right. They'd get nowhere if he lost his head.

But goddammit, this was Jordan, the girl who had more or less hijacked their lives, who had willingly taken them on and had unblinkingly accepted every wretched thing about their lives. She was their friend. She was family. She was his _girlfriend_, the first real, honest-to-God relationship he'd had since Jessica.

"Sammy," Dean repeated, and Sam squinted, as if the gesture might actually do something for his train of thought.

"I think my informant may be on the inside of this," Sam said. His voice was steady and brusque; he'd had a lot of years of practice keeping it that way. "This stuff, it's not the sort of thing you pick up accidentally. She'd have to be there."

Dean cocked an eyebrow. "She?"

Sam narrowed his eyes at him, and Dean allowed a smirk to quirk his lips, just to show that he was joking; the smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Yeah, she," Sam continued flatly. "She's giving us a way to track it. It's how I caught up last time—it looks like it's changed its parking habits since then."

"_Parking_ habits?" Dean repeated. "What kind of creepy-crawly _is_ this?"

"The kind that wears suits and has minions masquerading as employees. Look at this." Stopped at a light, Dean accepted the receipt Sam handed over, looking down at it with a puzzled frown.

"Quercus muehlenbergii? What the hell is quercus muehlenbergii?"

"No idea," said Sam. "I'll do some research when we get back to the motel." He saw Dean's lips tighten. "What?"

"I don't know," Dean said, running an anxious hand over his mouth. "I don't like this. Information just being dropped like this—"

"I offered to pay her money," interrupted Sam, "but she wouldn't take it. She was crying and almost didn't give it to me. I don't think there was anything easy about getting this information, Dean."

Dean sent him a concerned look. "People can fake it, Sam."

"You think I don't know that?"

Dean turned his eyes back to the road, gripping the steering wheel so tight it creaked under the pressure. Sam began flipping through the papers once more, reading through it feverishly, seeing nothing he hadn't spotted the first time through. Somewhere in here was the answer. This would lead him to Jordan. Or it would lead him into a trap—but he would think about that later.

* * *

Sometime later—Sam wasn't sure how much later; in any case it was dark and Dean was nodding off in front of the infomercials—Sam got around to looking up the quercus muehlenbergii receipt. The memo had led him in meaningless circles when he couldn't track down even so much as a business license. The parking stub was generic and didn't mark the exact parking space, and without watching going to the parking garage and watching more than a week's worth of security tapes from dozens of cameras, there was no way to track down any van that might have parked there—assuming the van had parked there at all. The potion wasn't anything special; it was an old recipe to calm the nerves, and except for a preference for tree-based ingredients, it didn't stand out from any other concoction of its type he'd heard of.

He stretched once before turning back to the computer. Over on the bed, one of the books Dean had been looking through slid with a soft _thud_ to the floor, and Dean's head came to rest against the headboard. Sam sympathized. Neither of them had gotten much sleep in the last two days.

Because it was the easiest way to begin, Sam pulled up Google and typed in "quercus muehlenbergii." He thought it was probably some kind of plant, and this hunch was confirmed when images of a tree popped up. He perused the search results, reading whatever he could find on the tree, whose informal name was the chinquapin oak.

Half an hour later, he was shaking Dean awake. "Wuh?" Dean mumbled, looking blearily up at Sam. "Sam? What's wrong?"

"You remember that receipt for half a ton of quercus muehlenbergii?"

"Yeah." Dean came awake enough to sit up, rubbing his eyes. "What about it?"

"Well, I googled it—"

"Good job, man. I mean it."

"—and it's a tree, but that particular species of chinquapin grows predominantly in the northeast," Sam pressed on, ignoring Dean. "And that potion recipe, I looked up the ingredients, and almost all of them are native to the Great Lakes. I did a bit of cross-referencing and I think it all points to a native of Michigan, or somewhere close."

Dean considered this for a moment, leaning his head back against the headboard, not to fall asleep this time, but to better survey the ceiling. "And if this thing we're hunting is old …"

"Which it is."

"Then we're talking about _seriously_ native."

"Right." Sam closed the laptop and set it aside. "So I was thinking, ancient, native, seriously evil—why is it buying wood? Seems a bit much, right? I mean, I'm sure there's chinquapins around here somewhere."

"A bit hard to find unpopulated areas in Long Island, though," said Dean. "Maybe privacy is an issue."

"That's what I thought. So maybe this thing is trying to recreate its native environment."

"A forest full of chinquapin."

"Exactly. And the only reason to keep order a half-ton shipment of wood—"

"—is if it has to be fresh, and by has to be, I mean that it can't live without it," finished Dean.

"_Exactly_," Sam said again, beginning to smile. "And that gave me an idea."

"Ideas are good."

"There was this old Native American legend I read once, something called a baykok."

"I'm listening."

"It's basically a predator. It's supposed to look something like a skeleton, like a man who's had his insides sucked out till he was literally skin and bones. It's based in the forests of the Great Lakes."

Dean sat up, looking suddenly very interested. "Long Island isn't exactly the Great Lakes. You said it's a predator—what does it hunt?"

"Warriors," said Sam. "Hunters. People whose business involves weapons, as far as I can tell."

"Explains why it's in business," Dean said, "and why it took Jordan."

"Yeah," agreed Sam, sitting back. He felt tired, and vaguely sick. "That's what I was afraid of."


	10. The Informant

Chapter 10!

* * *

As there wasn't much information to be had on their probable baykok, the boys did what they always did, and called Bobby—with the added bonus that they also called down Castiel.

"Baykok, huh," mused Bobby, who was, in the back of his mind, wondering which of his junkers would stand a trip to Long Island. Castiel stood considering the baykok with his head cocked to the side. "I didn't know there were any left. They were the white whales of the hunters a hundred, hundred-fifty years ago, and even then they were damned rare. Are you sure you've got one? I mean, Long Island—these things are forest-only, usually."

"Pretty sure," said Sam, "given that it's been ordering half-ton shipments of chinquapin wood."

"That'd do it," said Bobby, sounding almost impressed. "Pretty damn smart, hiding in the cities—no hunter would ever look for a baykok there."

Castiel's head was still cocked to the side. "It is very old."

The brothers exchanged a look, then turned towards Castiel. "Yeah, we guessed that," said Dean. "What else you got?"

"I'm not sure you understand how old," said Castiel, raising his chin a fraction of an inch, which in Cas-language was roughly the equivalent of outrage. "It is certainly older than the legends themselves. This thing you are hunting—unless the shroud hiding it is pushed aside, I can do nothing."

"Let's say, for the sake of argument," said Sam, "that we find it and, uh, push aside the shroud. Would you be able to do anything then?"

Castiel's blue eyes were flinty. "I would smite it from the face of the Earth."

"Whoa-ho," said Dean, clapping Castiel on the shoulder. Castiel did not look especially pleased by the gesture. "I think we've got ourselves the beginnings of a plan, Sammy."

* * *

Jordan's mind—or maybe it was her brain—ached dully. There was a sharp pressure at the back of her head, echoed down by identical pains down the length of her spine, into her hips, and down to her joints. She had been lying frozen in place for so long that she wasn't entirely sure that she _could_ get up now, even if the mojo holding her in place lifted. Although she wasn't sure if it really _was_ mojo; she'd awoke once to find a bitter, awful liquid being poured down her throat, and afterward her entire body had gone totally numb.

The horrible laughing face wasn't always there. The room stayed smoky and vague, especially after she'd woken up—the liquid, probably, which they seemed to administer while she was asleep—but the colors were not so vibrant anymore. She was glad of that. She could pretend that she'd lost her glasses, never mind that she didn't actually _wear_ glasses, instead of worrying continuously that she was in the midst of one long hallucination.

Once or twice she thought she caught a glimpse of someone human-shaped, although she couldn't be sure, given how impossible it was to see anything. But she was also sure, that one time she'd awoken while they force-fed her that bitter liquid, that someone had laid a hand on her forehead, feather-light, and brushed back her hair once before it was over. This sincerely perplexed Jordan, who was wavering almost constantly between violent apathy and equally violent terror, depending on how much she wanted to live just that minute. So the laughing face had lackeys. Okay, it wasn't original, but she could accept it.

But _kind_ lackeys?

Some time after this incident, she discovered she was regaining the use of her fingers. Someone had forgotten to give her the smoothie from hell. She was inching her fingers along, trying to find the edge of the table she was on—if indeed she was on a table at all—when someone must have seen her, for a voice very unlike the laughing face's said furiously, "Who forgot? Who?" and then a fist collided with her jaw, sending her plummeting into darkness.

So not all of them were kind.

Sometimes, when the laughing face came to visit, she was permitted—forced, more like—to cry. It was worse, in some ways, to the drugs. Big, feverish tears would slide back into her hair, and she would pray as hard as she could for it to stop. _I don't want to cry. Don't make me. _It never worked. Nor did her prayers to Castiel, which in and of itself was greatly worrying. Whatever this thing was, it was hiding her even from the eyes of Heaven.

Time did not exist in the place she was kept, for there was no sunlight to mark the time by, nor any particular schedule, unless that was that she was drugged whenever she slept. There'd been a brief stint where she'd done her best not to sleep at all, and therefore delay the drugging, but she'd received another fist to the face for that, and learned her lesson.

However long it was from the time she'd first arrived, the laughing face returned for another chat, one of a dozen chats it'd had with her so far, although it had not shown her its face since that first time. She found she couldn't regret that. When she slept, it was that face that she dreamt about. Had nightmares about.

"Good morning, my pet," it purred, in that revolting voice, viscous and wet. "You slept well, I hope?"

As was her habit now whenever the face returned, Jordan began to imagine dousing the face with gasoline and lighting it on fire. This usually derailed whatever speech it was going to make, at least for a little while, and she enjoyed these few moments of victory immensely.

It didn't work this time. "It seems your friends are more resourceful than I initially imagined."

Jordan wasn't surprised.

"They're coming for you, you know—yes, you do know that. You expect that. Well, I have not lived this long to succumb to a handful of second-rate ghostbusters. This of course means that I will have to take steps."

There was an edge to the voice now, a hardness, and Jordan found herself terrified. Take steps? What sort of steps? She had an awful feeling that her boys were walking head on into a trap, with her as the bait.

"Patience, my pet. We will come to that. But first—" A woman screamed. Jordan's eyes flew open, trying to see what was happening, but she could see only a maddening swirl of black, grey, and milky yellow. The scream grew ragged, and then died. "Well," said the face. "You get the picture."

* * *

The body was left much the same as the gold thief's had, attached to a wall by no visible means, but the savagery with which this one had been disemboweled … the boys stood behind the police line and did not bother flashing their fake badges. There was no need to. They could see just fine from here, as could the rest of the neighborhood, for the police hadn't yet been able to figure a way to cover it up. The body was twenty feet in the air, after all.

Sam's face was ashen as he turned away. "Someone you know?" Dean asked, fearing the worst, and Sam nodded.

It was the informant. Her face was etched deep with terror, and her eyes seemed to stare down at him, accusing him. _This is your fault, Sam Winchester_. "It knows she gave out information," Sam said. "It's taunting us, trying to trip us up."

Dean looked over his shoulder one last time at the woman who had given them their only chance of finding Jordan. "Yeah," he agreed. "And it's working."


	11. Respect the Librarian

And so cometh Chapter Eleven. I'll be honest, I'm a bit daunted by this whole 10+ chapter thing, I'm more of a one-shot kind of girl. At least they're short? _ aha, yes. ;) I'm going to get a bad reputation for oober-long fics if I keep this up. If you're still riding this daisy train, enjoy!

* * *

Jordan was barely awake, but already she knew something was different. She could move her fingers and toes, for one thing. The world around her had stopped spinning and after a few minutes of desperate blinking, edges began to appear through the fog, forming the shape of a room. An hour later—she was glad to find it _felt_ like an hour later, and not simply an aimless drift through time—she could move, jerkily, and see as clearly as she ever had.

Moving and seeing, however, did absolutely nothing for her. She was in a concrete box with a single door, made of heavy-duty metal that boomed deeply when she struck it, telling her that it was thick enough to withstand not just bullets, but explosions. Fitted into this door, however, was something that made her violently, impossibly mad.

A camera.

"Are you _watching_ this?" she shouted at the camera. "Are you enjoying this, you masochist? When I get out of here, I'm going to kill you! I am going to _kill you_, you understand me?"

She kicked the door a few times, punched it once, yelled in pain, and switched instead to hammering her fists against the door. It didn't do any good, but it was still a long time before she settled down and sank back down the floor. Her whole body ached from the sudden movement, after days and days of not moving at all, and her knuckles throbbed so badly she regretted—only a little—punching the door.

Once she'd caught her breath, she found herself wondering why there was a camera at all. So that it could keep tabs on her? It had lackeys for that, plenty of them. And—and this was the question that really sank a rock into her stomach—why wasn't she being drugged anymore?

* * *

Sam and Dean were hunkered down in a library and trying, as best as they could, to figure out a way to a) track down the John Smith baykok and b) shut down any and all mojo aforementioned John Smith baykok may be flinging around. Tracking the baykok would (in all likelihood) lead to them running headlong into battle, so they brothers mutually agreed, without actually saying so, to work on the mojo problem first.

The library they were sitting in was small by public standards but enormous by hunter standards, which is to say, it catered to hunters only; it was one of the benefits of hunting in Long Island. The shelves were mahogany, the carpet was thick and plush, and the desk jockey who'd been doubling as receptionist and welcoming committee wore silks and diamonds. ("Dude," Dean had said to Sam, leaning in close to whisper, "this is like a country club for hunters!") The library didn't have a name—except The Library—and existed in a deep corner of an old mansion that looked like something out of Jane Austen.

It was Bobby who had gotten them in, and he'd advised them to wear nice clothes, which had seemed entirely ridiculous to the boys right up until the moment they pulled in the driveway. Dean kept tugging at his jacket like it made him uncomfortable—because it was from his waiter's uniform, and was far too small—but Sam fit right in, because, of course, he had the Armani jacket that Jordan had nicked for him. The secretary-slash-receptionist gave Dean a scathing look and ignored Sam. He took this to mean (or hoped that it meant) that she had found nothing amiss with him.

They were sitting in overstuffed leather chairs, books and maps and sheaves of parchment arranged on every available space, including the arms of their chairs and their laps. The library had everything a hunter could ever want—Dean had made half a dozen explanations and began hastily writing in their dad's journal every time, with the gleeful excitement of a child for whom Christmas has arrived early—but it did not seem to have what _they_ wanted. Needed.

Sam let out an explosive sigh and threw aside a book from 1654, worth enough money to retire on. His eyes were so tired he was seeing double, and except for a few glancing mentions of "forest demons" in the upper Great Lakes area, he'd found absolutely nothing on baykoks.

"Nothing," he murmured, leaning his head back against the chair. "Nothing at all. You?"

Dean shook his head, making a frantic entry onto a free page of dad's journal, and ending it with a flourished symbol that looked almost Chinese but included a shape Sam knew to be Enochian. "Haven't come across a single reference to the things, let alone mojo that'd wipe the slate clean. I'm starting to think it doesn't exist, man."

"That is because," a stiff British voice drawled, "you do not know where to look."

Both Winchesters jerked around in their seats, looking up at a hawk-nosed old man with electric blue eyes, his skin paper-white and creased with a thousand minute wrinkles. His mouth was a thin, lipless line that did not seem to stretch far enough for real expression. He regarded them coolly for a long moment, and then walked to the middle of the little circle of chairs that seemed to designate the study area, his steps each precisely the same distance apart, laid down firmly as if as from the result of great premeditation.

Dean had seen a lot of things in his day. He'd never seen anything that gave him the willies like this guy.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, when it became clear that Dean wouldn't. His brother seemed to be paralyzed, staring up at the old man with badly disguised trepidation.

"I," announced the old man, eyes blazing with pride, "am the Librarian."

Dean's mouth fell open a little.

Before either brother could speak, the Librarian reached into the pocket of his ancient black suit coat and pulled out a sleek black device, about the size of a paperback book, and thin as a sheet of paper; the light caught along its edge and seemed to catch there, glimmering in fat droplets. Lifting a long skinny finger, the Librarian touched it, and its black color immediately vanished, becoming clear and emitting a faint light.

"The baykok files," he told it, monotonously. "And—" His gaze flicked briefly to Sam, then back down to the device. "Cleansing spells, alpha classification, if you please."

It beeped in his hand and turned black, and the Librarian slipped it gently back into his pocket. He clasped his hands behind his back. "Now," he said. "What else may I acquire for you gentlemen?"

"If you're not a friend of Bobby Singer," Sam ventured, "what does it usually take to get in here?"

The Librarian lifted a long, elegant eyebrow. "Membership to the Library requires a donation of fifty thousand US dollars," he replied. Dean made a cough that sounded almost like a gag. The Librarian paused, eyes trained pointedly away from Dean, before adding, "Per visit."

This time Dean really did gag. His collar seemed suddenly too tight, for he was tugging at it frantically.

"Of course for a … shall we say, slightly higher benevolence, we do give lifetime memberships," continued the Librarian. "I am not authorized to speak as to exactly _what_ this sort of generosity might embody, but I am quite sure you'll think of something." And he smiled. Or tried to: his lips gave a curious waggle and his eyes crinkled ominously as if the muscles there were being forced into something they'd never tried before.

"Right," said Sam, thinking on this. The Library clearly owed Bobby some sort of debt, although he doubted it was of the lifelong kind; he felt a pang of remorse that Bobby wouldn't get to use up his one visit himself. Sam decided they'd best make use of it. "Can you make photocopies of any of this, by any chance?"

The Librarian inclined his head gently.

"In that case, I'd like copies of your oldest manuscripts," said Sam, ignoring the fast look Dean sent his way. "A copy of the sixth-century hunter's bible, if you have it, and everything you have on warding spells—"

Dean had caught on. "And weaponry, and tracking—"

"—any records you have on confirmed unsolved paranormal crimes—"

"—a map of all the hell-gates would be great too—"

"—a list of all magically beneficial plants and herbs—"

"—ooh, and some coffee," Dean finished, grinning. The Librarian was looking pinched in the face, at there were little spots of white appearing on his cheeks that suggested that under the stone-cold expression of his face, he was actually furious. But he got out his paper-thin device again, and walked off, steadily muttering into it. Before he disappeared amongst the shelves, Sam distinctly heard him say, "And make a notation: if Bobby Singer ever calls again, tell him to _burn_."

Dean looked as cheerful as he had terrified. "Would a high-five be too much?" he wondered, and although Sam thought it probably was, he lifted his hand anyway, and gave a good-natured roll of his eyes when Dean said, "Nah, forget it." Sam kept his hand aloft, patient, until Dean snuck a look at him and said, "Ah, what the hell," and gave Sam a high-five that left his hand smarting and red.

"Feel better?" Sam asked mildly.

"Hell yes," said Dean, grinning. "I think we just got ourselves a first-class ticket to Save-Jordan-town."

Sam felt a real smile quirk his lips for the first time in days, a sudden rush of elation filling his chest. His brother was right. This was _it_. This was what they had needed.

_We're coming, Jory_, he thought.


	12. Something to Remember Me By

Ookay. So. I'm a daily updater, usually; I write about four to five chapters ahead and submit them fast, to keep myself on track. But Chapter Thirteen, man. Chapter Thirteen. I think I rewrote it seven or eight times, and it wasn't the same thing over and over, either; I was rewriting the whole end to the story, too. I was about ready to throw in the towel, but inspiration struck this morning, and so, thus, I felt safe in posting Chapter Twelve. (I like having at least a one-chapter buffer ... even if it's a little OCD, haha.) So, even though this is a few days late, here is Chapter Twelve! Enjoy and don't hate me for the delay xD

* * *

Their motel was within a comfortable distance of Long Island's swankier establishments, but it was hemmed in on all sides by bars, strip clubs, and one very ominous black-walled business that advertised using a painted eyeball. The nights were never totally dark here, lit up by an endless parade of multicolored neon, but lying on his back with his head turned towards the window, Dean found that in the morning, he could pretend that none of that existed. He couldn't hear the thrumming of distant club music; the windows were lit up with soft yellow sunlight instead of blue-pink-red-green-every-color neon; somewhere a bird was singing. If he let his eyes half-close, blurring the world around him, he could pretend he was in a house, someplace quiet and nice, with kids down the hall and a wife beside him, enjoying a moment of silence while the sun crept upward.

Of course, if you're Dean Winchester, such moments never last.

In the bed beside his, Sam sighed in his sleep and rolled over, bringing Dean fully awake. His eyes opened fully for the first time since the morning light had awoken him, and he saw them. At first, his only thought was that the floor looked odd—shiny. And then he realized what he was looking at. Photos. Hundreds of them. He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed as he did so, and his feet came down against the cold surface of slick photo paper.

"Oh my god," he said, before he could stop himself, knowing as he did that it would awaken Sam. He found himself bending at the knees, sinking slowly down to reach the photos, picking them up in handfuls and staring at them.

"Dean?" Sam's voice asked sleepily. Dean heard the bed creak, and then Sam's breath made an odd whistling sound, and Dean knew he'd seen them too.

"What is this?" Sam wondered in a voice barely above a whisper. He swallowed and tried again. "Dean, what _is_ this?"

Dean didn't answer him. Sam could see, same as Dean, exactly what this was. Dean let the photos drift out of his hands, holding onto one, the one that made his hands shake. Jordan's eyes were huge, overtaking the photo, staring sightlessly up—she could have been dead. Her mouth was stained an odd color, and her skin had become a sunken grey. But the worst part of it, the part that made his blood run cold, was the blackened, skeletal hand creeping up her neck to her face, holding her cheeks between two abnormally long digits, as if it had turned her head for a better angle. And though her eyes were wide, unseeing, dead, the expression on her face was one of unadulterated terror.

He looked to his brother first. Sam's face was stark white and horrified, his eyes locked on the photos in his hands and unable to look away. There was a brightness in his eyes that Dean thought looked like fear.

Then, almost as if his brain was on autopilot, he began itemizing the ways these photos could have gotten on their floor. Window? No, still locked, still salted. Bathroom? The discarded shirt lying just before its edge hadn't been disturbed. Front door? The pictures lay as evenly there as anywhere else; the door hadn't been opened or closed. That left mojo, but what kind, and how, was a more complicated question than Dean was able to answer.

He began, methodically, to pick them up. Sam was still frozen beside the bed, hunched over the photos in his hands, lines of white showing around his pupils. When they were kids, Dean would have knelt beside him, put an arm around his little brother's shoulders, and murmured something comforting. They were adults now, Sam deserved a moment. But as his stack of photos grew, the more his resolved crumbled, and finally he set them down, and walked over the sea of Jordan's face to reach his brother. The photos squeaked and crackled under his bare feet.

Sam didn't look up as Dean stopped in front of him, didn't move as Dean sank onto his haunches. Dean reached out and gripped his brother's tightly, and Sam's eyes slid shut, his lips compressing, keeping a lid on his emotions.

"Sammy," Dean said. His voice cracked awfully. "Sammy, we'll get him. You hear me? I said we'll _get him_."

Dean sincerely meant this. If Sam couldn't do it, if he couldn't summon the determination to carry this thing onto the end, Dean would do it for him. Dean had always known this was the way it would be. Sam was strong, stronger than anyone ever gave him credit for, maybe even stronger than Dean. Probably stronger than Dean. But Dean's role in this, his purpose in the grand scheme of things, was to carry his brother.

Sam's eyes opened. "I'm okay," he said, and Dean could see almost visibly the way Sam reorganized his mind, stamped down boundaries, beating it down until it strongly resembled Dean's. Dean's teeth ached as he clamped down on his molars too enthusiastically. Sam's eyes moved up to his brother's. "No, I am, Dean. I'm okay. Let's clean this shit up."

It took them awhile.

Dean wasn't at all sure what they would have done next, as they had only just begun perusing the research the Librarian had printed for them, and weren't in any way prepared to storm the proverbial (or, who knows, maybe actual) castle; but he didn't find himself in a position to find out, as that was when Bobby showed up. They had just begun piling up the last of the photographs when they heard the crummy whine of an engine about to fail. The brothers met each other's eyes, hardly daring to believe it. They hadn't asked Bobby to come—hoped, maybe, but they hadn't asked.

The engine petered out, a door slammed, and then—they stood frozen, half-bent, listening—an insolently loud _bang_ sounded at the motel door. They both grinned.

"Howdy," said Bobby, when Dean opened the door. He was wearing his grim face. "You get this sum'bitch or is there still time for an old man to get a slice of the action?"

Instead of an answer, Dean handed Bobby a stack of photos. Bobby took them, his eyes beginning to widen, and after a moment, he drew a ragged hand down over his mouth. He had stopped shuffling through them to stare at one where Jordan was crying, her head straining to get away from whatever was behind the camera, a great bruise on her cheek where she'd been hit.

"God in Heaven," he murmured, still staring at it. Dean opened the door a little wider for Bobby to come in, and shut it again once Bobby had shuffled absently over the threshold, gripping the photos so tightly their were beginning to crumple.

"Found them this morning," said Dean, brusquely. "They were everywhere. No one had come in or out, though, so I think it was mojo of some kind."

Bobby had sank down in one of the chairs, tossing the pile of photos onto the table beside it. His face looked pale and old. "Provoking you?" he asked.

"Reminding us what the stakes are," Sam corrected. He'd organized the photos into a neat, square little pile, and was now beginning to systematically rip them up into the wastebasket.

"This thing's obviously never met a pissed-off Winchester," growled Dean, folding his arms tight against his chest and beginning to pace back and forth, back and forth. Neither Bobby nor Sam looked up.

Bobby's lips compressed, making his beard bristle. "How'd it go at the Library?"

"Good," said Dean, still pacing. "There's just a lot of material to go through."

"Arrived in the nick of time, then," said Bobby, looking at the boys and suddenly very glad he'd decided to come. It had been a near thing. Part of him had wanted to let the boys hash this out on their own—they had pride, and liked to say they took care of their own business. But this, this was a different thing altogether.

Tentatively, wondering if he should say this aloud or not, he asked, "How many days now?"

It was Sam, head bent over as he ripped apart photos in earnest, who answered. "Six," he said. "It's been six days."


	13. Hemophobia

AHHH So excited about this chapter! The build up to it all but killed me, I wanted to free Jordan pronto haha. The first three or four times I wrote this chapter, the boys got her out - but then I realized, you know what, Jordan is a bamf. Girl would figure a way out on her own. So ... here we are. Freedom! :D I'm off to go write the next chapter!

* * *

They fed her a steady diet of water and protein bars, and they kept her awake and alert. Jordan was reasonably sure that this had something to do with the camera in her door, and that perhaps they were waiting for her to grow so thin and emaciated that it would make a truly horrific photo. The longer she was awake, the more she was beginning to remember the things that had happened when the green-slushy-induced fog was the worst. She was beginning to think the green mush drink was some sort of supernatural roofie. The camera lens in her door was giving her flashbacks to something else involving a camera, and it made her skin crawl so badly that she spent most of her time with her eyes averted.

There wasn't much to do in her cell except think. Were the boys looking for her? Did they have a plan to get her out? She thought they probably did, but wasn't entirely sure that they _could_. If Castiel hadn't busted her out yet, something was stopping him, and whatever was stopping Cas would certainly stop the Winchesters.

So she was on her own.

The daily routine was simple: two meals, water and protein bar, and that was it. The door would open a slit, a voice would tell her to stand back, and then a man would enter carrying the food; another man stood behind him with an AK-47, looking beefy and tough. She was reasonably sure that the man carrying the food was the same man who'd hit her. The voice, or what she could remember of it, was the same.

Food-Man wouldn't be a problem; he was thin as paper and had no balance to speak of. She knew from experience that he could pack a heck of a wallop, but she expected that was only when he had enough time to wind up. She'd certainly be faster than him. The real kink in the chain was the dude with the AK-47. Not only was he sporting some intense hardware, but even if she did wrangle said hardware away from him, he was about three times her weight and stood like a military man.

So. Maybe what she'd need to do was take out AK-47 first, and worry about Food-Man later. He might even be so surprised that he wouldn't react at first, leaving her time to work on AK-47. Big dude, big gun, big problem. She'd have to aim for the gonads, of course; it would throw him off balance. She'd have to incapacitate him, and fast. Her best bet would probably be to use the gonad-kick to maneuver him into a chokehold, even if that'd give Food-Man time to wake up and realize he was supposed to help AK-47.

It might be possible. Maybe. The next time they fed her, she took a hard look at AK-47, trying to decide his weak points.

He didn't look as if he had any.

The next time the food arrived, however, Food-Man arrived not with AK-47, but instead with a woman. She was about six feet tall and looked like her name was Helga the Huge, what with the muscles rippling all up and down her arms. She was bearing with her a bucket and a brush.

"Time to wash the dog," said Food-Man, all the warning Jordan got before the bucket was dumped over her head. It was cold, and whatever was in it bit at her skin and made it smart. Someone pinned her to the wall, and the brush was run down her, over skin and clothes alike.

"Okay," said the woman, and a second bucketful was dumped over her, although this time she was reasonably sure it was just water. Her skin throbbed in the places where the brush had touched—it had felt more like a shoe brush than a loofah. The food was dropped at her feet, and Food-Man said harshly, "Eat!"

Jordan wobbled to her knees, her eyes on fire where the soap had gotten into them, and fumbled for the food. She blinked rapidly to try and clear her vision; she couldn't see where the food _was_. Just as her vision was clearing, though, Food-Man's foot lashed out, catching her in the stomach.

"I said _eat_!" he snarled. If Jordan had really sat back and thought about it, she would have let it slide—would have waited for AK-47, who she had least had a game plan for. But she was furious, hating Food-Man for treating her like an animal, for starving her and pouring what felt like cleaning solvent over her. He kicked her, and she reacted, turning on him with such ferocity that neither Food-Man nor Helga the Huge had a chance to react.

Pretty much as she'd expected, Food-Man was no match for her. By the time he thought to block her she'd already driven a fist into his throat and put a knee into his crotch, and as he dropped, shrieking and gurgling, Jordan was already moving on to Helga. Helga brought her fists up, but made no effort to block Jordan's kick, which landed squarely in Helga's sternum and propelled her backward into the concrete wall. Helga hit with a wheezy "oomph" and stayed there, or stayed there long enough at least for Jordan to bolt out of the room.

It would have been wise to take the protein bar—she hadn't eaten since the last one, after all—but adrenaline kept her going, and she ran swiftly down the corridors. The place was a maze of hallways and holding cells, and began to shape up as some kind of private prison; it seemed just about endless until she spotted a yellow metal staircase. She felt a surge of elation—and then a crashing panic as she realized AK-47 was coming down them. She plastered herself against a wall, just out of sight of the staircase, and listening with her breath frozen in her chest. His heavy, resolute steps echoed in the hallway.

If he spotted her—she'd have to try and take him. He'd be a tough fight even if she was on top of her game, which she most certainly was not, and more likely than not she'd end up dead on the floor.

Dead was better than locked up, though.

Summoning her courage, Jordan prepared for AK-47 to round the corner, but then the sound of his footsteps began to fade away; she peeked around and realized he must have turned down the second hallway instead. Relief flooded her—escaping this place might actually be possible.

She took the stairs slowly, although she wanted nothing more than to run up them full-tilt, and this in the end was what saved her. The stairs led to a second level, and this one was crawling with personnel, all of whom would have heard her in a second. She crouched just below the doorway, waiting, waiting, and after what seemed like ages, saw her opportunity. Two of the guards were on opposite sides of the hallway, and between them, leading to bright sunshine, was a hallway. She took a deep breath, set her feet, and ran.

Neither one of them saw her, but they certainly heard it when she catapulted out the windows. Surrounded by sparkling glass, she fell ten feet to a manicured lawn, and found herself in the parking lot of an office building. Before she could have a chance to think about that, though, an alarm went off, and all around her she saw guards running for her, all of them armed and preparing to shoot.

Jordan did the only thing she could do—she ran.

It was luck, like everything else had been luck; she was barefoot, bleeding from the glass, and limping thanks to a bullet that had come just too close. The parking lot was littered with sneaky little pebbles with sharp edges. There were cars, all around her, windows exploding and frames shaking as bullets thudded into their exterior. She ran bent at the waist, with her hands skimming along whatever they could reach, trying to keep her level. It was hard, amid the gunfire, to remember which way was up.

Then, as if from a great distance, there was a roar unlike any roar Jordan had ever heard. It was not like the lions at the zoo, or any other kind of animal she could imagine; what it really reminded her of was a landslide. Once, as a kid, she'd been hiking with some friends—who knows where—and out of nowhere a dull rumble had began, growing in volume, and then they saw it, the hillside just crumbling away. It was the sudden rains that had done it, shaking up previously bone-dry rocks and gravel, and it had been one of the most terrifying experiences she'd ever gone through.

This sounded a great deal like that—the slow rumble and then the horrible crescendo. There was an abrupt cease in the hail of bullets as they all stopped to listen, but Jordan wasn't one of them; she hadn't even paused. She came upright and began running full-tilt for the end of the parking lot, enclosed by a chain-link fence. Her feet screamed in pain—she'd stepped on something truly sharp somewhere. She didn't slow. She took a running jump and clawed her way up the fence, desperate to get across before the guards realized where she'd gone, as she'd be a sitting duck perched up on a fence like that. In her rush, she lost her grip, and she hit the ground on the far side, landed squarely on her back. The air whooshed out of her lungs, leaving her breathless on the ground, just as the bullets began to fly once more.

There was a man with a dog standing beside her on the sidewalk. His mouth was hanging open, and was still hanging open when his chest flowered red and he fell bodily across his little terrier. Jordan felt something like a scream beginning in her chest, and she rolled swiftly onto her stomach, crawling away with all the speed she could muster. Her heart was pounding so fast she thought it might explode out of her chest. She was so close!

She managed to get behind the wheels of a little Prius parked close by, and it gave her a few blessed seconds with which to catch her breath. She didn't stay any longer than that, though. She knew as well as the guards did what the roar had meant. Skeletor had just discovered that she was gone, and he wasn't pleased.

Sucking in one final deep breath, Jordan bolted straight into the oncoming traffic, causing a big black pickup to go screaming into the chain-link fence, and behind it, a maroon Crown Vic drove straight into the Prius she'd used as cover a moment before. They created a wall between her and the office building from hell, and gave her time to get some distance between her and the guards. They surely had cars, SUVs, something to pursue her in; it'd be far harder now, with a three-car pileup directly in front of the driveway.

She kept to alleyways and back roads wherever she could, and although she was endlessly terrified that they would catch her, her adrenaline was wearing down. Soon she was hobbling along at a disjointed jog, crying in earnest and taking great terrified gulps of air. Finally she had to stop; her feet were alive with pain, and it was echoed all over. It seemed there was no part of her that didn't hurt. As she leaned against the back of a wholefoods store, pulling her knees up to her chest, she saw that she was streaked with blood—the glass had cut her, and cut her in earnest. Occasionally someone would walk past, and they gave her wide-eyed looks, as if she were a maniac. No one offered to help.

Eventually it occurred to her that she'd escaped, and that she couldn't stay in an alleyway for the rest of her life: she had to get help. And help meant one thing. She staggered to her feet, still crying, more out of sheer pain than fear now, and walked down to the street. At the corner there was a gas station, and gas stations meant phones.

The man working the counter saw her and promptly went white as a sheet. She wondered if he was afraid of blood—it looked like it. "Please," she said, tears dripping off her chin and striking the floor. "I need to use your phone. Please."

Either because he truly wanted to help, or because he thought it would get rid of her faster, the cashier handed her his own cell phone. Her hands were shaking, and the blood slicked on her fingers made it hard to grip; she had to try three or four times before she got the numbers right. As she put the phone to her ear, she saw him stifle a gag by clamping his hands over his mouth, and guessed that he'd be buying a new cell phone tomorrow.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, and then clicked. There was a brief pause—it sounded as if Bobby was in the background—and into the brief silence Jordan said, "Sam."

"Jordan," he said, and what she heard in his voice made her lose her head completely, and she sank down against the counter, sobbing, with her free hand over her mouth. "My God, Jordan, where are you? Jordan? Jory?"

It was a while before she had mastered herself enough to ask the cashier what street they were on. She repeated the address into the phone, and Sam said, "Lock yourself in the bathroom. We're coming, Jory. We're coming."

"Thank God," she breathed, and when the line disconnected, set the phone gently down on the counter. The cashier looked at it as if it might bite him. Knowing she was pushing her luck now, Jordan asked tremulously, "Would you mind if I cleaned up in your bathroom?"

"Uh," he said, and swallowed hard. "No. Of course not. Should I—should I call an ambulance?"

Jordan shook her head. "No," she said. "No, my boyfriend's coming to get me."


	14. Adventures in ER

Well. Chapter Fourteen, holy cow. This is turning into a seriously long fic - I should have wrote the whole darn thing before posting it, because I can't go back and edit/take out/replace what I've already got posted, not without changing the whole thread of the fic and confusing the heck out of my readers. Which is you. Now, I know where I'm going with this, but I like to have feedback, so please, review! I've been known to add readers' plot points in the past, you guys are pretty great with that, and I find fics are far more interesting with reader involvement. Usually that sort of thing comes naturally, but with Some Kind of Mojo, I seem to have the same number of dedicated followers, but none of them are the reviewing type. xD That's fine, of course, I'm not a reviewmonger. It does turn this into a writing-in-a-vacuum sort of deal, though, so if something occurs to you - i.e. wow, I'd really love to see some of this, some of that, or maybe "why hasn't this happened yet?" - it helps me to gauge the speed with which to deliver plot points and what to emphasize.

Ooh, this is turning into a long-winded lecture. I really didn't mean it to be, I just wanted to express that when I'm writing a series, I tend to do it more for the readers than for anything else, and it becomes an exercise in guessing when I have no idea what my audience is like. xD Okay, okay, enough whining. I'm off to write a chapter that's actually got some fun in it for once. This fic is so dark sometimes!

* * *

There were some twenty-five people sitting in the waiting room. A couple people were bleeding, but most were coughing or snuffling or burying their faces in buckets. One person was cradling a crooked arm. But all of them, without fail, were wearing expressions of identical horror.

Three men had come in through the sliding glass doors, one of whom, the tallest, was carrying a woman. One little boy tugged at his mother's jacket, mouth hanging open, and she hastily turned his head away, slipping her fingers down over his eyes. He complained loudly into the silence.

The nurses reacted before they even had a chance to come two steps. They came running out of the back, and behind them came a stretcher.

"Oh, no one needs that," Jordan complained, holding on tighter to Sam's neck. "He's only carrying me because I cut up my feet."

"Patient is responsive," someone said, and Jordan said over the noise, irate, "I'm _fine_, I just need some stitches!"

"Ma'am, please settle down," one nurse said brusquely. "Sir, put her on the gurney, please."

"No, no, don't you dare!" Jordan cried. "I don't need to be put on a gurney, I'm not dead! I'm just bleeding!"

"Jordan," said Dean, his voice a low growl, "let go of Sam and get on the damned gurney."

Jordan's face was pink with rage, but she let go, and Sam sat her down on the stretcher; the nurses immediately began wheeling her away. Sam, Dean and Bobby immediately made as if to follow, but a tall male nurse blocked their way.

"Sorry," he said. "Family only."

The boys exchanged a look. "We're her brothers," they said, together, even as Bobby said, "I'm her father, you idjit, can't you tell?"

* * *

They were allowed to sit in the hallway while Jordan was cleaned up, and so heard, with perfect clarity, when the doctor came in to talk to her. "The nurses tell me you haven't given us a full name. That true?"

"My name's Jordan," was Jordan's reply, a bit glumly, as she was being bandaged up as they spoke.

"What's your _surname_, Jordan?"

"Winchester," said Jordan, and Sam, who'd been taking a sip of the coffee Dean had gotten him, coughed and spewed it all over a passing nurse, who shrieked.

"Excellent, thank you," said the doctor, and scribbled it down. "Now, Miss Winchester, I'm here to tell you that we're going to have to keep you overnight, maybe even for a couple of days. You're dangerously malnourished and dehydrated, too. That combined with the level of injury you suffered—you really need to stay overnight."

"Like hell!" Jordan said, appalled. "That malnourished thing, I can take care of that with a hamburger—"

"No, Miss Winchester, I'm afraid not," interrupted the doctor. "You're extremely low on all essential nutrients, with the possible exception of sugar—the levels are just about normal."

There was a brief silence, and then Jordan shouted, "I thought that damned thing was feeding me protein bars! When I get my hands on you, your sadistic creep, I will wring your foul neck!"

"Miss Winchester, please," murmured the doctor, sounding a little frightened.

"You're telling me all I've had to eat is _sugar_," groused Jordan. "How bad is it? Is it really bad?"

"Another day or two, and you would have been in dire straits," the doctor replied. "As it is, I'm concerned about your ability to heal from your injuries. Malnutrition like this can result in any number of things, and one of them is extremely slow healing."

"Which is why you want me to stay."

"Correct."

Jordan sucked in a long breath. "Fine. But if you come near me with catheter, I will personally rip the nose off your face."

The doctor, when she left, looked as if she couldn't decide if Jordan was joking or not. Sam couldn't blame her; when Jordan used that tone of face, you started to think maybe she could throw mountains down on your head if she wanted to. The doctor paused just beside them.

"You're her family?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am," said Dean.

"Father," said Bobby, unnecessarily, jerking a thumb at his chest.

"You heard what I said?" the doctor asked, and they all bobbed their heads. "I'm going to ask you to try and calm her down. She sounded okay, and if I'd just been looking at her, I wouldn't have noticed a thing, but her heart rate was sky high."

"Yes ma'am," said Dean, again, and the doctor walked off. Jordan's voice sounded from inside. "_Ow_—I'm not scared—I said _ow_, that _hurts_—I just don't like being strapped down! Lady, you are butchering my arm!"

They filed into her room, standing to one side of her bed while the nurse, her hair beginning to come loose of her bun and her face covered in beaded sweat, struggled to sew up the myriad of slashes up and down Jordan's arm. Jordan wasn't making it easy on her; she was continuously tugging the straps over her arms and fumbling at the buckles.

"Stop it," said Sam, but she just glared at him and wiggled her shoulder until she was at a better angle to unlock the buckle.

"Jordan!" barked Dean, making the nurse jump and nearly stab Jordan. Jordan stared at him. "Quit moving!"

Her chin stuck out in her most mulish expression, but she stopped fidgeting. Every so often she'd twitch her toes rebelliously, though, just to make a point. The nurse calmed down enough to do the last stitches evenly.

"What'd you listen to him for?" Sam demanded. "_I'm_ your boyfriend."

For a moment, no one moved, not even the nurse. Then—slowly—one of Jordan's eyebrows began to raise, and in a dangerously calm voice, she said, "You want to be really careful about where you go with this one, lover boy."

"Need help extracting that sasquatch-sized foot out of your sasquatch-sized mouth?" Bobby asked, folding his arms across his chest and staring Sam down.

"What?" Sam demanded. He looked from Dean to Bobby and back again. "_What_?"

Dean looked as perplexed as he did, but seeing the way Jordan's eyes were beginning to narrow, hastily arranged his face into an expression of supreme disgust and said haughtily, "Apologize, dude, you're being a dick."

Sam looked thoroughly taken aback. Dean gave him an apologetic shrug, being just as clueless, and abruptly the nurse stood up, penciled eyebrows raised halfway up her forehead. "Okay, mister, you listen to me," she said, her voice suddenly devoid of the brusque medical practitioner accent, and replaced instead by something vaguely reminiscent of spandex and hoop earrings. "In _no_ universe is it incumbent upon a girl to _obey_," she said it like it was a filthy word, "her man. You keep saying shit like that and I _guarantee_ you, honey, she will be walking into the sunset with the milkman. Though personally," and here she looked at Jordan, "man with an ass like that, maybe you let it go every now and again, if you know what I mean."

Jordan muttered something under her breath that may or may not have been "what do think I've been doing?" No one had a chance to comment on this, however, as this was when Castiel chose to show up, appearing squarely in the middle of the room. The nurse screamed.

"Do not fear me," he rumbled. "I am an angel of the Lord."

There was no hint of disbelief in her face. She was prostrate on the floor in under a second, shouting incoherently into her blouse. Such was the noise that two of the other nurses rushed in, one of them still clutching a clipboard. One of them, a pretty redhead, asked the room in general, "What _happened_?"

"She thought she saw an angel," said Jordan, affecting a horrified expression and pressing a hand to her heart. "She was giving me stitches and then—wham!"

"Lord God in Heaven!" shouted the nurse, who was being lifted bodily and taken away. "_Ooh_, Lord! Lord my God!"

Castiel raised a hand. "Your prayers will be answer," he said, just before she turned the corner, and her jubilant hallelujahs could be heard echoing all the way down the hall.

"Why do you do that, Cas?" Dean demanded, and there was a twitch at the corners of Castiel's mouth like he was trying to smile.

"Believers make me happy," he said.

"I believe," Jordan said, and when he turned to look at her, there was a real smile starting to crinkle his eyes. "You finally joining the party, Cas?"

"Actually," he said, "I did not know there was a party to which I might attend. I had had no luck in finding you and sought out Sam and Dean to see what progress they had made. And I found them here. With you."

"You still can't see her?" Sam asked, sounding worried.

Castiel shook his head. "I can see her, but I cannot feel her."

"Sounds dirty," quipped Jordan, earning her a scathing look from Sam. "Sorry. Why can't you find me?"

"Some kind of mojo whammy the baykok put on you, we think," said Dean.

Jordan's expression went from amused to frightened in a split second. "It put _mojo_ on me? No, nix that, there's _still_ mojo on me? What's stopping it from just—just following me here?"

"Nothing," said Castiel, and Dean punched him in the arm so hard Castiel fell back a step. Cas looked at him askance, rubbing his arm.

"Us," corrected Dean.

Instead of comforting her, this seemed instead to terrify her; she abruptly began ripping the lines out of her arm and had swung her legs off the bed before anyone had a chance to protest.

"Whoa," said Sam, reaching out. "Jordan, stop. You heard what the doctor said—"

Jordan was already on her feet, though. There was a whiteness to her lips that said it had hurt her to do it. "Dean, get the car," she said, and when Dean looked as if he wanted to argue, said again, savagely, "Get the _car_, Dean!"

He gave his brother one despairing look before leaving. Apparently, Sam thought, the obeying thing went both ways with them. Jordan had picked up her mangled clothing from where it'd been neatly stacked, looked at it for a moment, and then dropped it. The pile hit the ground with a dull smack. They were covered in blood and sweat and had more holes than Swiss cheese—she couldn't wear them. Wouldn't wear them.

"Give me your shirt," she said, and anticipating what her response would be if he argued, Sam took off his jacket and obligingly stripped off his shirt. When he put his jacket back on, it was hard to tell that he was only wearing an undershirt. Jordan wrapped herself up in it and used her belt to cinch the waist in place, and although it was short, it covered all the important bits.

Her leg ached; it and the worst bits on her arms and shoulders had been the only things to be stitched before the nurse's little episode. It would have to do. Once they were far enough away, she'd make Dean do the rest, which was what she'd intended in the first place, before the boys had started griping about taking her to ER.

People stared as she walked out, barefoot and wearing only a shirt. A few nurses tried to stop her—"This is my boyfriend, and he has a gun," was her response—and she rebuffed all of Sam's attempts to convince her that he'd carry her the rest of the way. He had a terrible memory of opening the bathroom door to see her sitting against the far wall, legs stuck out, feet bleeding all over the tile like she'd been chewed on.

"We're getting away from here," Jordan told them, as Dean pulled up in the Impala. "As far away from here as humanly possible, do you understand?"

"Jordan—" Sam began, protesting, although what he was protesting he wasn't sure. Her escape from the hospital, definitely. Running away?—perhaps.

"Keep your head screwed on," interrupted Bobby, who had watched all the goings on with what he felt was a reasonable state of calm. "We'll go to my place. There's clothes there, for one thing."

Jordan glowered at him.

"I'm being sensible and you know it," snapped Bobby. "If you want to fly to the moon afterwards, fine. I'm sure Castiel would oblige you. In the meantime, we're going home, _okay_?"

Jordan blew him a raspberry.


	15. Burgers by Sunrise

Ah, this was so much fun to write! I want to go to Ms. Durand's xD This town that I describe is a weird amalgamation of my mom's hometown and my dad's hometown, both of which are appalling small. My dad's is the one with a town square and my mom's is the one with the red barns and wide fields, although the fields there are full of corn, not grass - but anyway. I digress. Enjoy! ;)

* * *

They were two days out from Bobby's. They'd stopped in a small little town, surrounded by grasslands, built up with farmhouses, surrounded by vibrant red barns. In the distance, a grain mill smoked quietly. The town itself consisted of a single square and one lone grocer, a holdout from the age before supermarket chains. Between the grocer and the town square was an old Victorian with peeling cream-colored paint bearing a hand-painted sign that read "B&B – two rooms."

It'd been nearly twilight by the time they pulled off the freeway, and only by virtue of the fact that they'd gotten lost had they found the town at all. (Well. In all honesty, _Dean_ had gotten lost, mostly by ignoring Sam.) In any case, no one had complained about the bed and breakfast, which was truly charming, and found themselves incapable of arguing (if indeed anyone had been arguing, or thinking of arguing) when the door opened and a pink-cheeked old lady peered out.

"Hello?" she asked, in a voice curiously accented. " 'Ow can I help you?"

"We're very sorry about the late hour, ma'am," said Sam, with his most earnest expression. "We got lost, you see, and—"

The old woman waved a hand, smiling. Her blue eyes crinkled upward with an ease that suggested that it was their natural formation. "_C'est la vie_," she said, in perfect French. "It 'appens. Please, come in. I am Ms. Durand, and this is my inn."

First went Sam—then Dean—then Bobby—and last came Jordan, who had lagged behind in order to fish spare pants out of the trunk of the Impala, so as not to be completely indecent. The old lady took one look at Jordan and cried, "_Mon Dieu_! What is it that 'appened to you, _ma chère_?"

"Car accident," Jordan lied, without blinking. Then she very neatly bent her head, so that her expression was hidden, and said in a convincingly emotional voice, "It was horrible."

Ms. Durand covered her mouth with hands nearly transparent with age, bright blue eyes wide and horrified. "It is a blessing you 'ave survived!" she declared, coming forward to lay a gentle hand on Jordan's shoulder. "I will not insult God's gift by charging you. Please, stay here tonight, and do not think of paying me!"

Jordan sniffled a little. "Oh, no, please—we don't like charity—"

"It is not charity, _ma belle fille_, it is a gift," said Ms. Durand, in an offended tone. "I will show you to your rooms. Come, come."

And so, thanks to Sam's sweetheart routine and Jordan's victim, they were put up in Ms. Durand's two free rooms, free of charge. The beds were twins, but they were deep and soft, and the sheets that covered them were freshly laundered and smelled of sunlight from the drying lines. They were all of them asleep by the time their heads struck the pillow.

* * *

The next morning found Sam sprawled across his bed, feet sticking off one end and his head off the other, one hand trailing against the cool wooden floors. The sunlight was resting full on his face, so that the skin there was warmer than everywhere else, and as he stretched he realized that the angle of the sunlight meant that it was just past sunrise. Down below, Ms. Durand was singing, the words just barely distinguishable through the walls: "_Si tu me le demandais, j'irais __décrocher la lune, j'irais voler la fortune—_"

He sat up, knowing before he looked that Jordan wasn't in her bed across the room, and looked instead out the window. She was standing—barefoot again!—out in the long grasses, his shirt rippling around her as the wind moved across the plain. She'd tied her hair back into a hasty braid, but the wind was teasing it free again, so that bits of it flew in and around her face.

Without really knowing why it was necessary, he tiptoed out of the room, giving Bobby and Dean's room an evaluative glance as he passed, just to make sure they were still asleep. Their snoring duet was testament enough to that, and so he went out past Ms. Durand, who was dusting, to the backyard where Jordan was. He did not see the knowing smile Ms. Durand sent his way, not that he would have acknowledged it if he had.

The air outside smelled sweet and fresh, totally unlike the city air they'd been breathing for so long. He walked, setting his feet down silently and firmly the way Dean had taught him—they'd been at a park, or a schoolyard, or something, and Dean had made him work all day till he'd gotten it right; but then his brother had surprised him, and bought him an ice cream cone. No ice cream before or since had tasted so good—so that when he came up behind Jordan, and spoke, she would not have heard him coming.

She didn't jump, like he half-expected her to, but instead stayed frozen, with her hair dancing around her. He thought her shoulders looked tensed now that he was up close. And then, without warning, she spun around and flung her arms around his neck.

She was crying, he realized, and from the dampness of her collar, had been crying for some time. He couldn't blame her. He put his arms around her and lifted, so that her feet left the ground the way she liked. It was one of the times—one of the few—when it struck Sam, hard, that Jordan wasn't as strong as she put on. It was a hard thing to remember. She was too good at pretending, not that that was any good excuse, but it was still the truth. She strutted around and cracked out one-liners and arm-wrestled truckers at crappy dives in towns whose names they'd never remember, and it seemed, to Sam and everyone else, like she was unstoppable.

"I'm sorry," said Sam. His voice was too rough for the words to convey the meaning he wanted.

"For what?" she asked, voice muffled because her face was buried in the crook of his neck.

"For not getting you out myself," he answered. She lifted her head, and he let her feet drift back to the ground. She stayed on tiptoe so that she could look into his face. "We were so close, Jory. Really close. I just—if we had been faster—"

A slow smile had drawn up her lips, making the tears on her cheeks seem ludicrous. "You think you could have dealt with mojo that even Castiel couldn't break?"

"I've done more than that before," Sam said, fiercely. "Dean and me, we've pulled off things that _no one_ should be able to pull off, we—"

"Cool your jets, Superman," said Jordan, really smiling now. "I'm sure you and Papa Bear would have figured it out eventually. But this girl waits for no man. I had an opportunity, and I took it. Okay?"

"We had the information," Sam said glumly. "We were putting the pieces together. It would have been a day—two at most."

Jordan didn't answer. She was thinking about the camera in the door, and the impromptu bath. She didn't think she'd had a day, let alone two. Instead of voicing this aloud, she asked, "Any of that info talk about how gank it?"

"Some," said Sam, "but being that it's so hard to track down, the info almost useless."

Her lips compressed together. What she wanted, more than anything, was to see Skeletor burn—but it was beginning to look like maybe that wasn't going to happen any time soon. And then Sam said, "I saw a diner in town. Want to see if we can't convince them to let us order burgers before noon?"

Who was she kidding? What she wanted, more than anything, was her boyfriend—and a big, fat, juicy hamburger. Jordan's eyes glittered excitedly. The monster could wait. The nightmares could be dealt with later. The endless parade of bad, worse, and terrible could be filed away for now. "Get me some pants," she said, "and I'll race you."


End file.
